


The Only Difference Between Villainy And Anti-Heroism Is Press Coverage

by watanuki_sama



Series: Pretty. Super. [1]
Category: Common Law (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Depression, Giant Robots, M/M, Mention of canon off-screen suicide, Platonic Male/Female Friendship, Some Swearing, Superhero cliches, Superheroes, There's a fine line between villainy and anti-heroism, Warped perceptions of self, Wes has unhealthy coping mechanisms, Wesvis endgame, self-destructive behaviors, self-hate, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 14:09:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 41,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12110406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watanuki_sama/pseuds/watanuki_sama
Summary: Now, sometimes he has trouble remembering which one is the costume and which is his true identity—sometimes, he feels more like Injustice than he ever feels like Wes Mitchell, that the lawyer is just a suit he puts on so no one will know who he really is.





	1. Track One

**Author's Note:**

> I have a weakness for superhero stories. Heavily inspired by Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.
> 
> Title is a play on the song _The Only Difference Between Martyrdom And Suicide Is Press Coverage_ by Panic! At The Disco.
> 
> Much love and thanks to **warrenkoles** who helpfully beta’d the fic and told me it was a good story even when I had doubts. I always appreciate the support, sweetie.

_“Nobody is a villain in their own story. We’re all the heroes of our own stories.”_  
_—George R.R. Martin_

\---

Every Saturday, between 3:30 and 4:00, Wes goes to the laundromat down the street. It’s part of his routine, and Wes is very fond of his routines. In the two years since he’d moved to this apartment, he hasn’t missed one Saturday.

Though, if he’s being completely honest, his routine isn’t the only reason he goes to laundromat every Saturday. It isn’t even the main reason.

The main reason is standing behind washer #7. He has dark skin and bright blue eyes, and he always wears a leather jacket that makes him look insufferably cool. Wes doesn’t know his name, but when he smiles, Wes sort of feels like he’s having a heart attack.

Needless to say, Wes always makes sure to come when there’s the highest chance Laundry Guy will be there—that is, on Saturday afternoons between 3:30 and 4:00.

(Kendall always teases him about Laundry Guy. She thinks he should go over, strike up a conversation, at least get the guy’s name. Wes will always say he isn’t that brave, and then Kendall will scoff and say, “Really, Mr. LA Vigilante?”

“I’m wearing a mask then, so it’s hardly the same,” Wes will always protest. “If you’re so interested in his name, you go ask.”

“I’m not the one making googly eyes over the dryers,” she’d retort, and that’s always the point when Wes revokes her invitation to Laundry Day.)

Laundry Guy glances up from washer #7 as the bell over the door chimes, letting out a long, slow smile that sends tingles through Wes’s body and makes his heart clench in his chest. It should be alarming, and in a way it sort of is, but mostly it just makes Wes feel dizzy.

He bites his lip, ducks his head, and goes to the furthest washing machine in the room.

If Kendall were here, she’d poke him with her sharp little elbows and say he was being a coward. “Anyone who dresses in skintight suits and roams the streets at night should be braver than this!” she’d say. “Go talk to him.”

Kendall isn’t here, and Wes has no intention of talking to him. But…

He glances up, and finds Laundry Guy watching him. When their eyes meet, Laundry Guy grins and winks. Wes flushes, dropping his gaze to his laundry basket. After a few heart-pounding seconds, he darts another quick glance out of the corner of his eye to find that Laundry Guy has gone back to his own clothes.

Wes has no intention of talking to him, but still.

Slowly, he starts to smile.

\---

His good mood lasts three-quarters of the way home, right about the time he passes Crispin Electronics. Like most electronic stores, Crispin’s has a wall of televisions in the front window, all tuned to the same channel.

Today, the TVs are showing a perky blonde in a baby-blue pantsuit, reporting about Injustice’s latest failure against Golden Boy, with plenty of video footage to really drive the humiliation home. Wes can’t hear what the perky blonde is saying, but he can imagine how it goes, since so many of these news reports all end up saying the same thing.

“Is Injustice a hero or a villain?” the reporter is probably asking. “He saves people from danger, just like our local heroes do, but he definitely has a grudge against the police and city officials. Why, just last week he was foiled in a dastardly plot against City Hall. If he’s a hero, why is he attacking our leaders and protectors? And if he’s a villain, why isn’t the League doing anything about it?”

_Because the League is full of idiot do-gooders with their heads up their asses,_ Wes thinks sourly, watching as Golden Boy tosses Injustice over his shoulder like nothing. _And that one…_

On the screen, Golden Boy pauses for the camera, hands on his hips, chest thrust out heroically. He makes a dashing figure, with that strong jaw and those dancing blue eyes. Just seeing him makes Wes’s blood boil. His hands tighten on his hamper. 

_That one’s the worst._

He grits his teeth and turns away before he has to endure any more.

\---

Wes’s power isn’t that great. He isn’t indestructible like Golden Boy. He can’t fly at supersonic speeds like Jetstrike, or phase and turn invisible like Spectre. His power isn’t flashy or loud or even very noticeable. Some days, he isn’t even sure his power _is_ a power.

Wes is athletic. Not super athletic—he can’t jump ten feet in the air or run for hours without tiring. He’s flexible and agile and fast, but only at levels just above a normal, non-superpowered human. It meant he’d never failed PE, but it didn’t do him much good in his everyday life.

Then…well, then the _incident_ happened two years ago, and everything changed. He got a new job, moved to a new apartment, he was doing what he could, fighting the good fight, and it never felt like enough. He’d work and he’d work and nothing would change.

That was when he donned a mask and went out at night. Maybe he actually thought becoming a vigilante would change things when nothing else had. Or maybe he just wanted to punish himself for what happened, because getting beaten up was all he was doing those first few months.

That was when Kendall found him.

\---

She’s curled up on the couch when he gets back to the apartment, her tablet in her lap, fingers flying over the screen. She mumbles an absent reply at his greeting, not even looking up. Wes doesn’t let it bother him; he’s used to her ways. By the time he deposits his laundry on his bed and returns to the living room, she’s pulled herself out of her tech-fog and is waiting for him. As soon as he appears, her eyes are pinning him to the spot, a wicked grin crossing her lips.

“So? Was he there?” 

Wes pretends not to know what she’s talking about. “Who?”

“You know.” Her grin gets wider, eyes dancing at the chance to torment him. “ _Laundry Guy_.” She draws the words out, makes them a few extra syllables long. _La-a-aun-dry Gu-a-aai_. Wes isn’t quite sure how, but he knows she is ruthlessly teasing him, because she is a horrible person who likes to make him squirm.

“This,” he declares, moving into the room and leaning against the back of the couch, “this is why you are no longer invited to Laundry Day.” She opens her mouth to retort and he, a little desperately, says, “I thought up a new catchphrase.”

It’s deflection, pure and simple, but it does what it’s supposed to. Kendall drops the subject of Laundry Guy and her eyebrows go up. “Yeah? Hit me.”

Wes straightens, puts his hands on his hips and thrusts out his chest, and says, in his best superhero voice, “Justice may be blind, but I’m not!”

There’s a long pause. Wes waits.

The pause continues. Wes deflates a little.

“You don’t like it.”

“I didn’t say that.” Kendall sits up, scratching the back of her neck. “I mean, it’s just kind of…I dunno. Heroic, I guess.” She shrugs. “Not exactly the kind of thing a supervillain would say, you know?”

“For the last time, I’m not a supervillain.”

“That’s not what the news says.” She flips her tablet over, revealing the local news channel, which is showing that same footage of Injustice being trounced by Golden Boy. Wes scowls, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Clearly, none of them know what the word _anti-hero_ means.”

“I’m not sure _you_ know what the word means.”

“I fight crime! So I have a few quirks…”

“I’m really not sure your whole vendetta against the police can really be called a _quirk_ …”

“You’re fired.” Wes points at her, a sharp, angry jab through the air. “You’re no longer my sidekick.”

“Yeah right,” she scoffs, leaning back on the couch. “You’d be lost without me.” Her fingers resume their rapid dance over the touchscreen. “Just give in and become a villain already, it’s so much cooler.”

Wes throws his hands up in the air and stomps into his room. He can hear her laughing all the way down the hall.

\---

She was sitting on the fire escape when he staggered back from yet another piss-poor attempt at vigilantism. He didn’t notice her right away, she was sitting in the corner of the platform and he’d been hit upside the head a few times. For a minute, he was torn, because he couldn’t exactly go waltzing in through the front door in a blood-covered skintight costume, but there was the little issue of having one of his neighbors know there was a vigilante living on the floor above them.

He ended up standing there dumbly, clutching his side (bruised ribs, at the very least, and one good kick to the stomach that had made him vomit everything he’d eaten all day) and blinking at her. “Um.”

“Well,” she said, unfurling to a height of five-foot-nothing. She eyed him up and down, a frown tugging at her lips. “I was going to say something witty and pithy, but going from that stunning opening, somehow I’m thinking you’re not up for it right now.” Her frown deepened, and she leaned closer, staring at the exposed part of his face. They’d gotten in a few lucky punches there, too, so it was probably turning a nice shade of _oh god it hurts_ right about now. “Wow. Okay. Let’s take care of that first.”

That was when she grabbed his hand and pulled him in through the window to her apartment. She was a little whirlwind of energy, and Wes had been too injured and too concussed to do much more than protest feebly. She ignored it, plunking him down on the couch and disappearing behind a door.

Wes sat on the couch, wondering if he should expend the energy to try and escape to his own apartment. Then he shifted, and pain flared up his side, and he wondered if it would be impolite to curl up and cry on her couch.

“This is actually a really good opportunity,” she declared, this redheaded stranger who’d absconded with him, and she bustled back into the room holding the lovechild of an alien probe and a ballpoint pen. “I mean, it’s totally because of you that I get to take my designs and actually make a working prototype. So, you know, thanks for that. Now hold still.”

She held the alien-probe-thing in front of his face and hit a switch. Colored lights blinked on the side, and Wes felt warmth wash over his jaw, sinking into his skin and taking away the pain. He closed his eyes and made a sound that was a little pornographic in nature, relishing in the soothing absence of pain.

She made a small sound of triumph, pulling the wand thingy away, and taking with it the gentle warmth. Wes almost protested, but then he realized that even without the gentle heat, there was no pain in his face. He reached up, feeling along his jaw, noting the distinct lack of swelling or bruising, and gaped at her.

“What was that? Who _are_ you?”

She grinned, a bright, sunny smile. “I’m just a girl who really, really likes inventing things. And this—” She held up the wand, waggling it between thumb and forefinger, “Is a dermal regenerator. I watched a lot of Star Trek as a kid. Now, if you want me to patch up whatever’s going on with your ribs, you’re gonna need to take off your top.”

Wes almost protested at this point, but then he ran his hand over his jaw again and decided it was a worthwhile sacrifice to be made. With much wincing, he stripped, sitting on her couch in nothing but a pair of skintight pants. He’d never felt so exposed.

She clucked her tongue, moving the wand-probe over the darkest bruises. “You know,” she said conversationally, “usually if I’ve got a guy this undressed, I know his name by now.”

Wes bit back a groan of bliss and lifted his arm so she could reach the bruises that wrapped around to his back. He swore he could feel the warmth sinking all the way down to his ribs, curling around the bone and seeping in and oh, it was _wonderful_. “Wes Mitchell.”

“Nice to meetcha. I’m Kendall Zehetner.” She beamed at him, eyes alright with, what he would come to later realize, a thousand inventions just waiting to be made. “I think we’re going to make a great team. How do you feel about rocket boots?”

That was the start of it, when Injustice went from a guy in a costume getting pummeled in back alleys to someone to pay attention to. Wes knows it’s all thanks to Kendall; without her inventions, he’d still be limping home every night and making excuses at work for his many and varied injuries. He couldn’t have done any of this without her.

Inadvertently, that means she’s also the reason he has a nemesis in the form of the insufferable Golden Boy, but Wes tries not to hold it against her. Too much.

\---

At work on Monday, Golden Boy and Injustice are all anyone can talk about. Wes shares a tiny cramped office with Jeff and Laura, and he has to listen to them jabber on and on about the news story and how Golden Boy is the city’s most perfect wonderful superhero and how Injustice really needs to be taken out right now.

“I just don’t understand why the League doesn’t do something about it,” Laura says during one of her many, many coffee breaks. (She seems to spend more time on coffee breaks than actually working, leaving Wes to pick up much of the slack.) “He’s a _villain_ , the League is supposed to take care of villains, not leave them wandering around for another chance to strike.”

“Anti-hero,” Wes corrects absently, more of his mind focused on the Ortega file in front of him than the conversation at hand.

It’s the silence that pulls him away from the file, absolute silence in a room that is almost constantly filled with one of their chattering. He looks up and finds both of them staring at him—Laura’s mouth is hanging open, coffee mug dangling from slack fingers, and Jeff has turned around, eyebrows almost touching his hairline.

Wes, not used to so much focused attention aimed his way, rears back a little. “What?”

“Anti-hero?” Laura repeats.

Jeff frowns a little. “What the hell is an anti-hero?”

Wes curses to himself and totally blames Kendall for this slip. If she didn’t insist on calling Injustice a villain all the time, the reflex to correct her wouldn’t be there. (It’s one of his coping mechanisms, blaming Kendall for things. She always just rolls her eyes and says, “Stop being so emotionally stunted and get over it, Wes, really.”)

Before he can come up with a plausible excuse, Laura says, “You don’t usually get into the superhero discussions. What is it about this one?” Her face suddenly changes. “Oh, Wes, honey, you’re not a villain sympathizer, are you?”

“What? No!”

“Because I understand why you’d feel a connection with a guy who hates the cops, I do. We all understand.” Jeff nods eagerly, and Laura continues. “But throwing your lot in with a guy like Injustice is _not_ the way to go.”

“He saves people,” Wes protests. Injustice _saves lives_ , why do people always overlook that?

“He’s also tried to blow up City Hall four times,” Jeff chimes in. He’s a superhero junkie and has a near-encyclopedic knowledge of all hero and villain shenanigans in the state of California. “He’s tried to take out the mayor, police commissioner, and chief of police countless times” (that’s a lie, Jeff could easily rattle off the numbers if asked) “and he turned everyone at the League of Superheroes headquarters into animals once.”

Wes remembers that. Everyone had been animals for a week until a team from the New York branch could come out and reverse it. “That was kind of funny.”

Laura is starting to look concerned. “Wes…”

“Look.” He cuts her off before she can go on. “The system is broken. Injustice is just trying to—to take out the old system and put in a new one. Isn’t that a _good_ thing?”

They all know the system is broken. It’s why they’re working here, where they have more pro bono cases than billable ones and can barely pay their bills some months, instead of working across town for five hundred bucks an hour. 

But that doesn’t matter. Because the media has painted Injustice as a villain, and they buy it, hook, line and sinker. Nothing he says is going to change their minds; he can tell just by looking at their faces.

He grabs his file off his desk and stands, squeezing through the tiny gap between his desk and the wall so he can get to the door. (He’s not kidding when he says the room is tiny and cramped. They could barely fit all their desks in there in the first place, and the only other exit is right where Laura is standing.) 

“You know what, I’m gonna go to the records room.” Also known as the literal broom closet they store their files in. “At least it’ll be quiet in there.”

Neither of them say anything as he leaves, but he can feel their worried stares on his back.

\---

“So,” Kendall had asked, only a few weeks into their impromptu partnership. “Why do you have such a hard-on for the police?”

Wes fiddled with the electric gauntlets she’d made, designed to give a hell of a jolt to someone, and said, “None of your damn business. They’re a little tight by my elbow.”

“Lemme see.” She grabbed his arm and a screwdriver, bending over the gauntlet. Her hair swung down over her face, so when she spoke, a few minutes later, he couldn’t see what expression she was making.

“It doesn’t bother me, you know,” she told him, removing a plate on the upper part of the gauntlet. She grabbed a couple more tools and started mucking about with the wire innards—Wes had learned to keep very still when she was doing this sort of thing. “Your little vendetta. I wouldn’t be doing this if I had a problem with it.”

“Oh.” Wes was gratified, a little. She was the closest thing he had to a friend, anymore, so it was good to hear that. “Okay.”

“I’m just thinking. If you go full villain, I can make the _really_ cool toys, like—like ray guns and giant robots. So. You know.” She replaced the plate on the gauntlet, screwing it back on with deft fingers. “Just let me know. Try it now.”

“Anti-hero,” he corrected absently, flexing his fingers. There was no pinching by his elbow at all. “It’s perfect. Thank you.” He leaned over and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek, and they both knew it was for more than just fixing the gauntlet, but neither of them mentioned it.

\---

By Tuesday, Wes is more than fed up with the looks his coworkers keep sending him and the little whispering sessions they have behind his back. “Tell me there’s something,” he begs Kendall, tossing his briefcase onto the kitchen table. “Something, _anything_. Something _big_.”

“Okay, let me see…” Kendall types at her tablet, knowing, after all this time, exactly what to look for when he gets like this. “Oh, here’s one. A police ball on Friday night.”

“What?” Wes stops and stares at her. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

“Because you’re a dunce and never read the papers?” She shrugs. “It’s been all over. It’s the big thing of the year.”

“That’s perfect.” Wes grins. “I bet there’s going to be all sorts of important people there. This is absolutely _perfect_.” He looks at his sidekick. “Anything you want to recommend?”

She bites her lip, barely hiding her glee. “Well, I’ve been toying around with ideas for a freeze gun…”

He pauses, frowns. “Don’t we have a freeze thing already?”

“We have a freeze _bomb_ ,” she corrects. “It’s a little different. The freeze gun is more direct.”

“Huh. Alright, go for it.” One of the best parts of doing this isn’t helping people, or fulfilling his vendetta against the police, or any of the other reasons people might come up with. It’s watching Kendall’s eyes light up, hearing her speak so fast she stumbles over her words because her mind is racing. 

She was just a girl going to school and dreaming about things she wanted to make until the day she found a vigilante on her fire escape. Now, she gets to make whatever she wants, and Wes doesn’t know how he’d do this without her.

He doesn’t know how he got so lucky.

\---

The rest of the week flies by. Thoughts of freeze guns and police balls keep Wes in a good mood, and it’s much easier to ignore his coworkers when he’s occupied. Kendall spends most of her free time either at the junkyard down the block, looking for parts, or cooped up in her bedroom-slash-lab. Wes leaves leftovers in the fridge and doesn’t bother her.

Friday rolls around. There’s an almost palpable sense of excitement in the apartment, the way there always is before one of these big missions. Kendall retreats to her lab to finalize some last-minute details with the freeze gun, and Wes heads into his room to change.

In the corner of his closet is a leather briefcase. It was six hundred dollars, and he used to carry it to work every day when he still worked at his old firm. Now, it sits in the corner of his closet, a reminder of everything he’s trying to change. He pulls it out, sets it on the bed, and thumbs open the lock.

Inside, rather than files or papers, is a neatly folded skintight suit. With the reverence of ritual, Wes pulls it out and lays it on the bed; a silver jumpsuit, ocean blue gloves and boots, and a silver cowl with a blue band that covers his eyes and wraps all the way around his head. For a moment, Wes simply stands there, staring down at the suit.

It had been just a whim at first, a stupid idea that maybe he could do something if he got out on the streets, rather than fighting for cases that, more often than not, were decided before he ever stepped into the courtroom. Now…

Now, sometimes he has trouble remembering which one is the costume and which is his true identity—sometimes, he feels more like Injustice than he ever feels like Wes Mitchell, that the lawyer is just a suit he puts on so no one will know who he really is.

The line blurs the more he does this, and some days…

A sharp rap on his door brings him out of his thoughts. “You almost ready?” Kendall hollers, _rat-a-tat-tat_ ing on the door with her knuckles. “I’ve got the mods all done, I want you to come look at it.”

Wes picks up the cowl, letting the slippery fabric run through his fingers. Now is not the time to have an identity crisis. “I’ll be right out.”

As she walks back down the hall, he strips out of his clothing, neatly putting them away, in the closet or the hamper as need be. Then he slips into the suit, saving the cowl for last, and as easily as that, Wes Mitchell closes his eyes, and Injustice stands there.

He takes a deep breath and moves towards the door. The police ball won’t know what hit it.

\---

He staggers in after midnight, knocking a chair over as he falls through the window. He coughs, blood dribbling down his chin onto the floor as he grasps for something to pull himself up. Moving in general makes his entire body, and specifically his shoulder, throb, but he refuses to lie down on the floor and die, no matter how appealing the idea sounds.

The overhead lights flick on, and Wes hisses, flinching back from the glare. Kendall’s horrified, “Oh my god, Wes!” just sets a marching band going in his head. He can’t help relaxing a little, though. Kendall is here. Everything will be okay now.

She hurries over, in Hello Kitty pajamas and a purple scrunchie that fails to keep her hair from falling into her face. “Jesus, Wes,” she mutters, hauling his good arm over her shoulder and helping him to his feet. “You look like you got ran over by a truck.”

He does his best, but he ends up leaning more on her than he means. Still, she’s a strong girl, and easily holds him up, guiding him towards his room when his feet refuse to cooperate. “Not—truck,” he gasps, coughing up more blood. “G-Golden Boy.”

“Fuck. I really don’t like the way you’re wheezing.” Her stride lengthens, and she’s practically carrying him now. She pushes his door open with her foot and hauls him inside, easing him onto the bed as gently as possible. “I’ll be right back, don’t move,” she orders, racing to her own room with a steady litany of, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

He obeys, not moving, not even reaching with his good hand to see if he can feel the damage done to his ribs. He wonders if he’s punctured something. He’s never had a punctured lung before, but the fact that he’s spitting up blood with every breath probably isn’t a good sign.

Oddly enough, the dislocated shoulder hurts more than whatever is going on in his chest. That’s probably not good either.

Kendall scrambles back into the room, holding the bastard child of an iron, a microwave oven, and a hair curler. Wes has never been so happy to see one of her torture devices.

She plugs it into the wall socket and switches it on. “This is going to hurt,” she warns him, and without pause holds it over the bloodiest part of his chest.

Dermal Regenerator 1.0 was small, the size of an oversized ballpoint pen, and it only worked on surface stuff. Bruises, abrasions, that sort of thing. It exuded a gentle warmth that seeped into his skin and healed the wounds, restoring him good as new. For a long time, he didn’t need anything more.

Then he fought Golden Boy for the first time. The hero was indestructible and had super strength, and he didn’t pull his punches. When Wes staggered home with a broken clavicle and three broken ribs, they both realized the original regenerator wouldn’t be enough.

Hence Version 2.0, heavier-duty and built to fix the really big, tough problems. Like broken bones or possibly-perforated lungs.

The gentle warmth sinks into his skin, familiar and soothing, wrapping around his hurts and taking them away. Wes exhales a bubbly, bloody breath in relief.

Then the healing begins, and Wes can’t help screaming as the machine does its job and yanks his broken rib out of his lung. Version 2.0, unlike the original, isn’t painless in the least, probably because it has to move bits of his internal organs around to fix him.

It’s almost a relief to pass out. At least there’s no pain anymore.

\---

It actually started out well, better than some of his plans ever did. He’d arrived at the police ball, hovering in the shadows outside the opulent convention center hosting it this year. He’d watched guest after guest arrive, rich people in black ties and glitzy dresses. He’d waited until everyone had arrived, until all the invitations had been handed over and the doors were closed. 

He’d burst in through the window, scattering shards of glass across the floor. It had been quite dramatic, which he’d been rather proud of. People had screamed, which he’d been less proud of, but alas, it was one of the hazards of doing this.

The police commissioner himself had been standing at a podium on the stage at the front of the room, as luck would have it. “Justice may be blind,” he’d shouted, raising the freeze gun, “but I’m not!” (He didn’t care what Kendall thought, that was a damn good line and he was going to use it.) And he’d pulled the trigger. The gun had worked perfectly, lancing a beam of blue light across the room that hit the commissioner dead on, encasing him in a shell of solid ice.

Really, it had all been going spectacularly well for that first minute or so.

And then Golden Boy showed up, stepping out onto the stage. He didn’t say a word, just crossed his arms, those sharp blue eyes flinty even from this distance.

“Oh, come on, _seriously?”_

Golden Boy went from standstill to a sprint in a second, barreling right towards him. He’d brought the freeze gun up, sent a blast at the hero that might have been a feather for all the good it did.

Then Golden Boy threw a punch, and things got kind of fuzzy after that.

\---

“How did he even know you were there?” Kendall asks the next day, once he’s woken up and cleaned the dried blood off. “I mean, we literally decided to hit this place like four days ago. How did he know?”

“I don’t know.” Wes scarfs down the rest of his sandwich and gets up to see what else they have in the fridge. Regeneration uses his own body’s energy, and it always leaves him starving. He’s already on his third course. “Maybe he just knew it was the sort of target I’d normally go after and was lying in wait.”

“I guess.” Kendall frowns a little, scrunching her nose. “Doesn’t really seem his style, though.”

“I don’t know about that.” Wes pulls out a container of three-day old spaghetti, sniffs it, and starts eating it cold. “Wrecking my plans and almost killing me seems pretty standard.”

“Well.” She reaches out, pulling her tablet in front of her. “I’m just going to have to come up with something that’ll at least incapacitate him for a minute.”

“You do that.” The spaghetti is good, but there’s not much of it, and he’s done in two minutes. “Do we have anything with lots of calories?”

“There’s ice cream in the freezer,” Kendall says vaguely, already absorbed in her puzzle.

Wes grabs a container of double-chocolate-extreme and a spoon. “Perfect.”

\---

Saturday is Laundry Day, and the thought of seeing Laundry Guy after his failure last night puts a spring in Wes’s step. It doesn’t quite make up for the crushing defeat at the hands of his most hated nemesis, but he has to take his victories when he can.

Laundry Guy is the only one in the building when he arrives, sitting on a bench and flipping through a motorcycle magazine as the dryer spins. He glances up when the doorbell jingles, and that familiar smile crosses his face, slow and easy. Wes’s heart thuds painfully—if he hadn’t been put under Version 2.0 last night, he’d have thought something was wrong.

Ducking his head to hide the flush on his cheeks, Wes shuffles to a washing machine and starts sorting his clothes. It’s funny, really. He can put on Injustice’s costume and go out at all hours of the night, posturing and fighting crime, confident as any superhero, but faced with a cute guy in leather, he gets shy and tongue-tied. If only he had some of Injustice’s courage when he was just plain Wes Mitchell, maybe he _could_ go over there and talk to Laundry Guy, like Kendall always pushes him to do.

As it is, Wes just loads his clothes and darts glances out of the corner of his eye, sneaking peeks of someone he’ll probably never talk to.

Ah, well. That’s just the way it goes sometimes.

He shakes his head and shuts the machine’s top, reaching for his detergent. His hand closes on empty air. For a second, all he can do is stare at the empty spot in his hamper. How can he be out of detergent? He has everything else—coins, laundry sheets, his folding board so he can fold them here and not have them get wrinkled on the way home. But no detergent.

“Awesome,” he grumbles, grabbing his quarters and crossing the room. Now he has to use the stuff the laundromat supplies. He tried that once, it was off-brand and left his clothes feeling scratchy, but he’s reluctant to leave for the corner store to buy more. Laundry Guy might be gone by the time he got back.

_I am a besotted idiot_ , Wes scolds himself, shaking his head as he feeds quarters into the dispenser. Willing to put up with scratchy detergent for the chance to stand silently in the same room as Laundry Guy. What a sad, sad little life.

The quarters clink hollowly into the change slot, and no detergent comes out.

“Oh, wow, really?” What kind of laundromat runs out of detergent? It looks like he’s going to have to go to the corner store now, and hope like hell Laundry Guy is still here when he gets back.

Or…

He can almost feel Kendall jabbing her elbow into his side. (Or maybe it’s residual pain from the punctured lung. Maybe Version 2.0 didn’t actually heal everything...) _Go talk to him_ , she’d say if she were here, _go ask if you can borrow his detergent._

_Why can’t I borrow yours?_ he’d ask, if she were here.

_Because I want you to go talk to him, so there,_ and then she’d probably stick out her tongue, which is number 42 on the List Of Reasons Kendall Isn’t Invited To Laundry Day Anymore.

The thought of actually going over there and _talking_ to Laundry Guy makes Wes’s knees weak and gives him heart palpitations. But if he _does_ , if he _actually talks_ to Laundry Guy, then…well, who knows what could happen?

_You are Injustice_ , he tells himself. _You have gone up against criminals and the police and fucking Golden Boy. One man in the laundromat is nothing._

He takes a breath, squares his shoulders, and crosses the room before he can think too hard.

Laundry Guy lifts his head on his approach, and up close his eyes are even bluer than Wes realized. Bright and dancing with mirth, endless blue like the ocean, and Wes gets a little bit lost for a second.

Laundry Guy’s mouth curls up at the corner. “Can I help you?”

Even his voice is wonderful, rich and smooth like dark chocolate and infinitely amused. A quiver goes through Wes’s belly, and he has to lock his knees and swallow before he does or says something utterly embarrassing.

“Um.” Wow, Mitchell, great start. “I…uh, I sort of left my detergent at home, and…well, I was wondering if—that is, could I—of course, you can say no, but, uh, I would really appreciate it if I could, uh…”

Laundry Guy is biting his lip a little, which is _utterly_ distracting, and Wes is proud of the sentence he did manage to get out, even if he didn’t actually, you know, _finish_ it. He trails off, wringing his hands together and cursing the little Kendall-voice in his head. He’ll probably go home and curse at Kendall for real after this, too, just to make himself feel better.

“Do you want to borrow my detergent?” Laundry Guy asks, with a note to his voice that Wes _almost_ recognizes. He knows when people are laughing at him, but this is different than usual, in that there’s no malice or mockery. Just sort of a quiet amusement.

“Yes. Yes please.” Wes can feel his face flaming, and he thinks if the ground opened up and swallowed him whole, he would just curl into a ball and accept the embrace.

Instead, he reaches out and takes the offered detergent, muttering, “Thank you,” and Laundry Guy gives him that slow, sweet smile again and says, “No problem.”

Wes shuffles back to his washing machine and feels inordinately proud of himself. Kendall would be smirking triumphantly at him right now, were she here.

Funny, how something so small feels so much greater than anything he’s done as Injustice.

He doesn’t say anything else as his laundry is washed, and he resists the urge to keep sneaking glances at Laundry Guy the way he usually does. It would be weird, he thinks, to keep peeking when he’s already borrowed the man’s detergent. Which is why, when his clothes are done and he finally looks back towards the dryers, he finds the bench empty. Laundry Guy has already slipped out, without Wes even noticing.

His heart plummets pathetically. Biting the inside of his cheek, he tucks the detergent in his hamper and carries his wet clothes to a dryer. It isn’t until he’s tossed everything inside and sat down himself that he notices the paper.

It’s a crumpled receipt on the bench, right where Laundry Guy had been sitting. Wes tries to ignore it. Unfortunately, his finicky nature means he can’t just leave it sitting there. With a great sigh, he hauls himself to his feet and picks it up, mentally lamenting the fact that Laundry Guy is, apparently, a litterbug.

He’s halfway to the garbage can when he realizes there’s writing on the back of the receipt. He stops, smoothes the receipt on the top of a dryer, and stares.

_Gimme a call_ , the note says, and there’s a string of seven numbers and a name. _Travis_.

“Travis,” Wes says. He likes the way the syllables roll on his tongue. 

He folds the receipt and puts it in his pocket, and when he returns to his seat, he’s smiling.

\---

“You stole my detergent,” he accuses the moment he steps into the apartment.

“I absolutely did,” Kendall agrees, which throws him for a second. He was expecting more of a fight. Before he can regain his balance, she sets down her tablet and props her chin on her palms, looking for all the world like an eager little kid. “I thought you could use some cheering up after last night. So? How did it go?”

“I should be pissed at you,” Wes grumbles, but the corner of his mouth is twitching and he knows she can see it.

She leaps to her feet, clapping happily. “Ooh, tell me everything. How did it go? Oh my god, did you _talk to him?”_

“I borrowed his detergent,” Wes admits, tilting his hamper to show off the detergent. “And he gave me his number.”

“ _Yes!”_ Kendall sounds much more delighted at the prospect than Wes personally feels she ought to be. She thrusts out a hand, fingers opening and closing imperiously. “Let me see it, cough it up.” Obligingly, he fishes the receipt out of his pocket and hands it over.

She studies the numbers, and really, she’s grinning an awful lot over one little phone number. “This is _awesome_ , Wes. So are you gonna call him?”

“Of course I’m going to call him. I have to return his detergent.”

“Yeah, but are you gonna _call him?”_

“I have no idea what that inflection means. What are you doing with your eyebrows? Stop it.” He snatches the receipt back from her, smoothing the edges with his fingers.

Kendall puts a finger to her chin and hums thoughtfully, sort of squinting at him. “You know, you’re really emotionally stunted.” She waves aside his scandalized look. “Oh, don’t be so offended, I mean it in a good way.”

“How can that possibly be a meant in a good way,” Wes mutters, but she’s ignoring him.

“I just can’t decide whether I want to watch you muddle through this by yourself, or if I should offer you some advice.” She taps her chin, all faux-thoughtfulness, and Wes throws his hand in the air.

“What are you _talking_ about?”

Kendall doesn’t say anything, just stares at him long enough he begins to feel a little uncomfortable. Finally she shakes her head and says, more to herself than to him, “No, definitely much funnier to watch you figure it out on your own.” She turns on her heel, scooping her tablet from the couch. “I’ll give you some privacy to make your call. Toodles!”

Wes gapes after her, completely flummoxed. “What the _hell?”_

Sometimes that girl makes no sense at all.

\---

“Hello?”

Hearing Travis’s voice melting over the phone lines makes Wes’s voice die in his throat. Somehow, he’d half-expected the number to be fake, directing him to a Chinese takeout place or something. But there’s no mistaking that velvet-smooth voice.

“Hello?”

_You can do this, Mitchell._ Wes clutches the phone and swallows hard. _Just say hello._

“Look, I’m about two seconds away from hanging up—”

“This is Wes!”

A long pause.

“Wes?” Travis’s voice is baffled, and Wes silently curses himself. Of _course_ he doesn’t know who Wes is, because Wes never introduced himself while he was stammering a request for detergent. He resists the urge to bang his head against something.

“Um.” Wes takes a breath and runs his palm down his pants. He’s like a teenage girl in an eighties film, this is ridiculous. “From the laundromat. I borrowed your detergent.” Lamely, he adds, “Hello.”

“Wes.” Hearing his name coming from Travis’s mouth is like hearing honey drip, and Wes feels a delighted shiver run down his spine. “Hi. I was hoping you’d call.”

“Well.” Wes clears his throat, trying not to let on how affected he’s feeling. “I’m calling.”

“I can see that.” Travis’s amusement is almost a tangible thing, and Wes wipes his palms on his pants again.

Absurdly, he half-wishes Kendall were here. There’s probably a protocol for this sort of thing that he doesn’t know, and the whole Injustice thing has eroded what few social skills he ever had. It’s safe to say he has no idea what he’s doing, and Kendall, who always seems to know what she’s doing, would be able to give him some pointers with this, while teasing him mercilessly.

At this point, he’d happily take the teasing.

But no, there’s just him, and that has to be enough. _Buck up, you’re Injustice, you can do this_ , he orders himself, and he straightens up like he’s in court.

“When do you want me to return it?” There, that wasn’t so hard.

There’s a long pause, and then, “Well, when are you free?”

“Um.” Wes’s mind goes horribly, terrifyingly blank. “I don’t…”

Taking pity on him, Travis interjects. “How about now? If you’re not busy.”

“Yes.” Wes leaps on the idea gratefully, nodding even though Travis can’t see it. “Yes, now is fine. Where do you…I mean, I can bring it back to the laundromat if you want?”

“Can you bring it by my place? If it’s not too far out of the way?”

“Sure.” Wes scrabbles for a pen and paper, phone tucked awkwardly between his ear and his shoulder. “Yeah, that’s fine. Um, where do you live?”

Travis rattles off the address, which isn’t far away at all, and Wes promises to be there soon.

Then he hangs up, stares at the address, and hyperventilates a little bit. He’s going to _Travis’s house_. The place where he _lives_. Oh god, what was he thinking?

“Are you gonna go, or just sit there freaking out?”

Wes jumps, whirling on Kendall. “How long have you been there?”

She gives him a pitying look. “That entire awkward conversation. You really need to work on your smooth-talk if you’re gonna seduce him.”

Wes flushes scarlet and stalks past her to his bedroom. “I hate you so much, you don’t even know.”

She’s still laughing when he returns with Travis’s detergent. He grabs the address off the table and leaves in a huff, and he just barely refrains from slamming the door behind him.

\---

“This can’t be right.”

Wes looks at the building in front of him, then frowns down at the paper in his hands. He’s sure he wrote the address down correctly—he had Travis repeat it twice, just to be on the safe side, but this is…a warehouse.

He’d logically figured Travis must live nearby, since he was frequenting the same laundromat every week, so he wasn’t surprised when the address Travis gave him was just a few streets away from his own. But then he’d walked here, and found the building that matched the address given, and…

“This can’t be right,” Wes says again, turning in a circle in case he missed something. Maybe there’s another building that’s actually someplace someone might live and he got turned around? But no, this street is nothing _but_ warehouses in every direction, including the one in front of him.

If this is some sort of trick, he’s going to be pissed and more than a little upset. He didn’t think Travis was the sort of guy who’d randomly prank the guy at the laundromat like this.

Biting his lip, Wes turns in one more circle, trying to figure this out, because if this _is_ the right address, he doesn’t want to just _leave_. But honestly, how could it be—

A door in the building behind him opens, and Travis’s voice calls, “Wes! You made it! That was fast.”

Wes’s heart does a funny little double-thump, and he turns, hands tightening on the bag in his hands. Travis stands in the doorway of the warehouse, beaming at him like it isn’t strange at all to be having a casual conversation in the warehouse district.

Wes swallows (some of) his nerves and crosses the distance between them. “I thought I had the wrong address…”

“Nope.” Travis slouches against the doorframe, all slinky and perfect and it should be illegal to look so attractive. “This is the right address.”

Wes looks up at the building dubiously. “Sorry, you…live here?”

“Yup.” The cat’s grin on Travis’s face just grows, making his eyes crinkle up at the corners. “Wanna come in?”

“You’re not going to murder me and bury me in concrete, are you?”

“Promise.” Travis turns and disappears inside, waving over his shoulder. “Follow me!”

Hesitantly, Wes follows.

The inside of the warehouse is a pleasant surprise. Instead of being dark and spooky, which is kind of what Wes, who has not been in a multitude of warehouses in his life, expected, it’s rather well-lit and clean, as far as warehouses go. The trailer in the center of the wide-open space is strange, he’ll admit that, but it’s sitting on a patch of Astroturf and festooned with Christmas lights which…actually, Wes can’t decide if that makes it stranger or not.

He follows Travis to the center of the warehouse, eyeing the sleek silver trailer. “This is…different.” Laundry Guy, it appears, may actually be quite a very odd person.

Travis hooks his thumbs in his jeans and shrugs, all easy and fluid. “I like the freedom of my trailer. I like to move around a lot, and this way, I can just take my stuff with me.”

“Makes sense, I suppose.” He may be a bit strange, but that doesn’t really detract from his attractiveness or his silky smooth voice or the way Wes’s heart won’t quite settle down. He shifts, trying to come up with something else to say, and the bag at this side rustles, reminding of his original reason for being here. “I have your detergent.”

He thrusts his arm straight out in front of him; Travis takes the bag, looking amused, and when their fingers brush, Wes feels tingles race all the way up his spine. He takes his hand back and rubs his fingertips against his pants without trying to look like he’s doing that.

“Thanks. For letting me use it. I do appreciate it.”

“No problem.” Travis shrugs again, the plastic bag crinkling against his leg. “Figured it was the least I could do, since your girlfriend wasn’t there for you to borrow hers.”

Wes blinks, eyebrows going up. “Girlfriend?”

“Yeah, you know.” Travis makes a bunched up motion by the top of his head. “The pretty redhead, always has her hair up? I’ve seen you with her a few times.”

Wes’s eyebrows go up even further. “ _Kendall?_ You’re talking about _Kendall?_ God, no, she’s not my girlfriend! She’s just my roommate!” It occurs to him that his tone could be construed as mildly offensive to Kendall, but he wants to make it very clear to Travis that there is _nothing_ going on between him and Kendall. Nothing at all. Not even the littlest bit.

The vehement denial seems to have the desired effect, because Travis’s face relaxes, eyes crinkling and dimples appearing in his cheeks. “Well, good. I’m…that’s good.” And Wes isn’t quite sure why Travis sounds so relieved at that, but he clearly believes Wes, so Wes relaxes too.

They stand there, and the silence fills the space between them. Wes wonders if he’s supposed to say something now. Then he wonders what he’s supposed to talk about. Small talk has never been his thing—that’s what he has Kendall for, to fill the silence with words he only half-listens to.

Just as he’s about ready to panic and start talking about—hell, he doesn’t know, the weather or whatever other people talk about, Travis coughs a little and fidgets, rubbing the back of his neck.

“So,” he says, dropping his gaze and peering at Wes through his eyelashes, “uh, this might be kind of sudden, but…are you doing anything tomorrow night?”

Wes’s plans for tomorrow night consisted of ruminating over Friday’s failed Injustice plot and working on a brand new plan that _wouldn’t_ end with him being punched full of holes. All rather important in the grand scheme of his vigilantism.

“No,” he lies. “I didn’t have anything planned.”

“Well, in that case...” There’s that smile again, the one that bursts like a sunbeam and sends heart palpitations through Wes’s chest. “Would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow?”

Wes can barely stand here for five minutes and keep up a conversation. He’s never had fantastic social skills and downgrading all of his personal relationships to a circle of one has really eroded anything he had left. Look at his relationship with his coworkers for proof—perfectly polite, but nothing beyond that. And anyway, he’s only just met Travis properly today, despite more than a year of Saturdays spent together at the laundromat, and Travis lives in a _trailer_ in a _warehouse_ , that’s practically a recipe for ‘creepy serial killer’. Plus there’s the fact that he’s secretly an anti-heroic vigilante that roams the streets at night and that’s just a recipe for disaster; Wes has read enough comic books to know how this goes. 

Really, there’s only one thing he can say.

“I’d love to.” No, wait, that’s not right. “Does seven sound good?” And there he goes again, his mouth running off without any input from his brain.

Travis nods, and smiles, and slouches attractively on thin air. “Seven is perfect.”

Really, Wes needs to leave before he does anything foolish. “I’ll see you then.” He smiles at Travis, turns, and makes his escape.

He can feel Travis watching him until he’s through the door.

On the street, he stops, takes a few deep breaths, and wipes his hands on his pants. That was nerve-racking.

_You’re a vigilante, for god’s sake!_ He can practically hear Kendall shouting at him. _He’s just a guy. There’s nothing to be scared about!_

But she’s wrong. This is personal, and that’s scarier than anything he could ever do in a mask. What was he _thinking?_

It’ll be fine. It’s just dinner. He shakes his head and takes a few more breaths to compose himself. It’ll all be fine.

He can’t quite wipe the goofy grin off his face.

\---

Kendall sits up as soon as he walks in, perking up like a hunting dog. “How did it go?”

Wes shuts the door behind him and lines his shoes up in the closet. “Fine. I returned his detergent.”

She leans forward, eyes sparkling intently. “And?”

Wandering into the kitchen, Wes leans against the counter. “He’s rather strange. He lives in a trailer in a warehouse.”

“ _And?”_

It’s rather amusing being the inscrutable cryptic one for once. “He had Christmas lights strung up. It was quite festive.”

“ _Wes!”_

Wes cracks, a grin crossing his face. “He asked me to dinner.”

The sound Kendall makes could shatter glass. She leaps off the couch while he’s rubbing his ears and flings herself at him. “That’s _amazing_ , Wes! I _knew_ you wouldn’t be a social recluse forever!”

He frowns at her, but he doesn’t dislodge himself from her grasp. “That’s…kind of condescending.”

“Oh come on, you barely even _talk_ to anyone other than me.” She rolls her eyes, then gives him a big squeeze. “But now you’re going on a date with the cute laundry guy!”

Wes, who was about to make a snappy comment about talking to his coworkers, chokes on his words. “ _What?_ This—it’s not a _date_ , Kendall.”

She pulls back, eyeing him dubiously. “He asked you to dinner, Wes. He gave you his _number_ on a box of detergent. That’s the most rom-com thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s not a date.”

“How do you know?”

“Because!” Wes throws up his hands like this should be obvious to her, even though she wasn’t there. “Because he didn’t ask it romantically or anything. It was just a casual invitation to dinner.”

She stares at him, not buying his logic for a second. “You wouldn’t know romantic if it hit you in the face with a brick.”

“Oh, now that’s just insulting.”

“It’s true in every way.” She shakes her head. “Wes, I love you, but you have the romantic sense of a goldfish. You should trust me here. He was asking you on a date.”

Wes crosses his arms stubbornly. “And I’m telling _you_ , he wasn’t.” He stomps off before she can say anything else, which technically means he had the last word, which _technically_ means he won.

So there.

\---

But the thought that this _might_ be a date makes him so nervous he ends up vomiting twice before he leaves.

As he’s brushing his teeth the second time, he stares at his reflection in the mirror and curses himself for a solid minute.

_You are so fucked up, Mitchell._

His reflection doesn’t argue with him.

He spits, rinses, and goes to get ready.

\---

The thing is, he wasn’t always like this. He used to be confident, self-assured, and a whole lot less anxious. They called him a force in the courtroom.

Okay, he still wasn’t the most well-liked person in the world, because he’s always had a sharp tongue, but he knew how to talk to people, could casually socialize with them when he needed to. He was never much for schmoozing and flirting, but he could at least fake it for a little while. He never had many relationships, and they always ended too soon, mostly because he was a workaholic who got absorbed in his cases more than the person he was dating. But he _did_ date, and he never threw up from nerves beforehand, either.

Once upon a time, he was pretty much a normal person.

And then—the incident two years ago happened, and Wes lost it. He became fixated, obsessed. He passed off cases, alienated his coworkers, became a pariah. The golden boy of the firm became the black sheep. And it wasn’t just at work, either, it was _him_. He felt _sick_ at work, sick to his stomach, got the shakes and became dizzy if he spent too much time at the firm. He almost threw up in front of a judge once, and the only reason he didn’t spew all over the courtroom floor was because he could pass the case to his junior partner and bolt out of there.

_You’re experiencing anxiety attacks_ , the doctors said, _take some time away, find your equilibrium again_. But he couldn’t bring himself to leave, and things only got worse.

Eventually, he left quietly, because it was easier than being fired. He downgraded his life, moved across town to an apartment that didn’t even have a laundry machine, and joined a tiny little firm that did mostly pro bono work to try and assuage some of his guilt.

It didn’t help much. He hated himself, hated his role in what had happened, hated that he couldn’t _stop_ it, and the guilt ate him alive. He started avoiding people, not that he knew much of anyone in this area, and it seemed like everything he’d ever known about how to interact with others dried up and withered away.

The first time the cute guy at the laundromat had smiled at him, Wes stumbled and banged his knee against the side of a dryer.

Kendall says he can’t _possibly_ be as oblivious and with people as he seems, or he’d have never been any good in his previous job. She’s probably right—anxiety attacks don’t just happen out of nowhere, and his anxiety only spikes when he’s around other people. It’s probably psychosomatic, or traumatic, or some other –ic word from the shock of—of the incident. Maybe he’s doing this to himself as _punishment_ , socially crippling himself because he thinks he deserves it.

Maybe.

But even if that is the case, it’s not like he knows how to stop it.

The fact of the matter is, none of that changes anything at all.


	2. Track Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You can do this,_ he tells himself, _you’re Injustice, you can do anything._ But somehow it’s so much easier to be brave in a mask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also posted on FF.net under the penname 'EFAW' on 10.15.17.

_“This is why you shouldn’t fall in love, it blinds you. Love is wicked distraction.”_   
_—Gregory Maguire_

\---

Wes spends fifteen minutes outside Travis’s warehouse, panicking, then knocks on the door at seven on the dot. Travis answers immediately, which makes Wes suspect that Travis was standing inside, watching him freak out and make a fool of himself. If that’s the case, Travis makes no sign of it, smiling easily and pulling the door closed behind him.

“I figured you probably weren’t a motorcycle guy,” Travis says, (to which Wes mutters under his breath, “Damn right,”) “so I thought we’d walk.”

Wes nods and falls into step beside Travis, following where the other man leads. They don’t talk much—every time Travis tries to initiate a conversation, Wes’s reply is impolitely short and tense. After a few minutes, Travis stops trying.

If this _is_ a date, Wes is already fucking it up. If it’s _not_ , he’s making a _terrible_ impression.

The place Travis leads him to is, of all things, a diner. “They make the most amazing milkshakes,” Travis promises, holding the door open for Wes. All of the staff seem to know Travis’s name, and the girl taking them to their table gives Wes a contemplative stare that is enough to make Wes excuse himself to the restroom.

He splashes water on his face, grips the edges of the sink, and tells himself to calm down. _Not a date. It’s just dinner. This is not a date._

It doesn’t help as much as he’d hoped. Stupid Kendall, putting ideas in his head.

Travis is already perusing the menu when he slides into his seat, even though he’s clearly been here often enough he should have the menu memorized. “I got us both water to start with,” Travis tells him with an easy smile. “Hope that’s alright with you.”

“It’s fine,” Wes says, and hides his face behind his menu.

\---

If this is a date, it is the most platonic date Wes has ever been on in his life. Sure, it’s been a while since he’s been on a date—over two years and counting, at least, since before he left his previous firm. But he doubts dating has changed _that_ much since then.

Travis is polite. He keeps his feet to himself and his hands on his side of the table and the conversation, of the small-talk variety Wes has always been terrible at, is all the sort of stuff Wes might expect his coworkers to ask him, if he talked to his coworkers about stuff like this.

Wes really has no idea what’s going on.

But that doesn’t bother him, he realizes. It probably _should_ , because of the uncertainty, but Travis is so polite and friendly without being overbearing that Wes’s nerves start to settle. He relaxes, allows himself to enjoy their meal, sharing little quips and smiles with the other man.

The only snafu comes halfway through their entrees, when the subject of employment comes up. Wes tells Travis where he works, which earns him a blank look until Wes sighs and says, “It’s the third floor of that red brick building with the dim sum place,” and Travis brightens and says he knows the dim sum place, which is pretty much the typical reaction Wes gets from anyone who’s not a client. “What about you?” he asks, carefully cutting a bite from his club sandwich. “What do you do?”

“I’m a cop,” Travis replies cheerfully, and Wes’s fork freezes halfway to his mouth.

“A cop,” he says carefully. He’s had a lot of practice—his voice stays level, and he’s _certain_ his face doesn’t show anything too overt.

Still, Travis pauses, studying him. “Is…that a problem?” he asks slowly, setting his burger down. Wes follows suit, clinking his silverware a little too sharply against his plate.

He likes Travis. He’s liked Travis since that first day at the laundromat, when they met eyes across the room and he walked into a dryer. He thinks Travis is interesting, and funny, and even if it’s not a date Wes wants to get to know him better.

But Travis is a _cop_ , and Wes has so many issues with cops that he dresses up in costume to deal with them.

“I don’t know,” he says, completely honestly.

Travis runs his tongue over his teeth and nods slowly, leaning back in his seat. “Okay.” His eyes are like reflecting pools, calm and still, revealing nothing of Travis’s feelings on the matter. It’s like a wall has gone up around him. “Okay. You need some time to think about it? Do you want to call it good?”

Does he?

“No,” Wes decides. He picks up his fork. “Not yet.”

In an instant, Travis relaxes, smiling warmly, and it’s like the walls were never there at all. “Alright then. So tell me. You ever get any _weird_ clients?”

\---

They stop in front of Travis’s warehouse, a polite two feet between them. Travis pulls his hands out of his pockets and shifts on his feet, and there’s a sudden tension in the air that wasn’t there the entire walk from the diner. Wes wonders if this is it, if Travis if going to lean in and Wes is going to have to decide if he wants to kiss the other man or not. The thought makes the nerves spring back to life, and it takes an effort to stand his ground.

But Travis just rubs the back of his neck and looks at the ground. “You, uh…you decide if my being a cop is a problem?”

Wes blinks, because that really was not what he was expecting. “Um…not yet.”

“Right.” The other man shuffles again, eyes darting up to meet his. “Well. You have my number, so let me know. I’d really like to see you again.”

“Okay.” Wes waits, but he doesn’t have much else to say, and Travis isn’t doing anything. 

(This would be the perfect moment for a kiss, his traitorous mind whispers, but this is not a date and damn Kendall for putting ideas in his head.)

“Well, goodbye,” he says awkwardly, and turns away. Embarrassment thrums under his skin—he should have done _something_ more, but he doesn’t know what.

“See you on Saturday, Wes!” Travis calls from his doorway. When Wes glances back, the other man waves.

Wes gives a tiny wave back, biting back a grin.

\---

Kendall squints at him suspiciously after he recounts his night (at her forceful insistence; he barely made it through the door before she was up in his face, demanding “ _all_ the deets, Wes, don’t you dare skimp on me now.”) 

“Are you _sure_ it wasn’t a date?” she asks.

“Pretty sure.”

“It kind of sounded like a first date. And since I’m almost certain I’ve been on more than you have, I think that makes me a better judge.”

Wes glowers at her. “It wasn’t a date. He didn’t try to kiss me,” he offers as uncontroversial proof that this was _not_ a date.

Kendall shoots that down without trying. “He could be this thing called a _gentleman_ , Wes. They’re a rare and dying breed that _don’t_ always kiss on the first date.”

“He drives a motorcycle,” Wes protests. “He lives in a _trailer_ inside of a _warehouse!”_

“Maybe he’s being polite.”

“He’s a _cop!”_

Kendall pauses, choking on her next retort. “Oh,” she says in a small voice. “I didn’t realize.”

“Yeah.” Wes runs his hands over his face. “So even if—if it _was_ a date, I don’t…it wouldn’t have worked out anyway.”

The chair groans a little as Kendall gets up, moving to sit beside him on the couch. “Wes,” she says gently, resting her hand on his back. “I’ve never asked, and you know your thing with cops doesn’t bother me. I told you that. But you like Travis, right?”

The worst part is, he _does_ like Travis. He’s liked Travis for ages, and now that they’ve spent an evening together he likes Travis even _more_.

But Travis is a _cop_. And Wes just…Wes really doesn’t know.

He makes a frustrated noise into the palms of his hands.

Her hand is warm on his back, rubbing tiny circles. “Anything I can do?”

“Turn back time so I never got a crush on a _cop?”_ he grumbles, words muffled by his hands.

She hears him anyway. “I can work on that. Might take a while, though.”

He sighs, lifting his head to look at her. There’s no judgement on her face, no questions he’s not willing to answer. Just a sympathetic concern, and not for the first time, Wes thinks that he’s so, so very lucky he met her. He can’t imagine how hard he would have crashed and burned if she wasn’t there.

“Tell me what kind of cop he is?” he asks plaintively. 

She smiles and pats his back reassuringly. “I can work on that, too.”

\---

He tries not to think about it. He puts on Injustice’s costume and he goes out at night, doing everything he can to avoid thinking about it. But he can’t get it off his mind.

It’s not _fair_. He likes Travis, he really does, and yes, the thought of being anything more than friends freaks him the hell out, but he’d like the chance to _get there_ , to ease his way into being in a relationship, if Travis wants anything more than friendship with him.

But Wes is fucked up, he knows that, and most of his issues stem from his problems with the police. They’re the bane of his existence, he hates them _so much_ —

And Travis is a cop.

He’s a conflicted mess of emotion, and he can’t untangle the threads to figure out how he feels.

\---

“Here,” Kendall says Monday evening. She tosses her tablet in his lap, the screen opened to the first page of Travis’s personnel file. “I’m really not supposed to have this, so, you know, don’t make copies or anything.”

And this goes against every instinct Wes has, goes against the law he swore to uphold. But, he reminds himself, he gave up on the law when he took it into his own hands.

He picks up the tablet and starts reading.

\---

On Tuesday, Wes calls in sick at work. Thanks to Kendall hacking the LAPD servers for employee schedules, Wes knows exactly where and when Travis works, so he dons his mask and perches atop the building across from the station. With a radio headset Kendall jury-rigged in fifteen minutes, he listens in on the police band, waiting.

After an hour and a half, Travis emerges from the building, bouncing after his partner and mentor, Dan Noone, like an overeager puppy following an old dog. Even from this distance, the golden shield on his hip flashes in the streetlights, and Wes’s throat goes tight.

He follows Travis the entire day, staying out of sight since he is, technically, a wanted fugitive when he’s in costume. And Travis…Travis is perfect, comforting the victim’s family and interviewing witnesses and even from a building away Wes can see how the interviewees open up to him. Travis has a gentle charm that makes people trust him.

He’s the sort of cop they show on TV, the ones that always follow the rules and never stop until the case is closed.

If Travis had been there two years ago, then maybe…

Wes shoves the thought aside and continues his surveillance.

\---

“So?” Kendall asks Wednesday afternoon. “Made a decision yet?”

Wes spins his mug and shrugs.

She sighs. “You should try to make up your mind. He won’t wait forever, you know.”

“It’s been three days.”

“And I read that the average guy waits a week to hear back before giving up.”

“He’s not waiting for me to ask him out, Ken,” he retorts.

“There’s not as much difference between friendship and romance as you might think, Wes,” she shoots back, walking out of the room before he can come up with something to say to that.

\---

On Thursday, Wes picks up the phone, takes a few deep breaths, and dials Travis’s number. Travis picks up on the third ring.

“Hello?”

Just like the first time, Wes freezes, words choking in his throat. But this time, instead of getting annoyed or frustrated, Travis pauses, then asks, “Wes?”

Wes exhales harshly, slumping in his seat. “Hi, Travis.”

“Hi.” Wes can practically hear the smile in the other man’s voice. “I’m glad you called. I, uh…I wasn’t sure you would.”

“I wasn’t sure I would either.” Right up until he dialed the last digit, Wes hadn’t decided if he would hang up or not. But now that he’s hearing Travis’s voice, he’s remembering their dinner, and how much he’d enjoyed himself. How much he wanted to get to know Travis better.

Travis is a cop, yes. But just this once, Wes thinks he might be able to look past that.

He’s at least ready to try.

“Wes? You still there?”

“Are you free tomorrow night?” Wes clutches the phone, butterflies in his stomach. “Do you want to go out again?”

“Yeah,” Travis says without hesitation. “Yeah, that’d be great. What time?”

“Six thirty?”

“Perfect.” Even through the phone line, Wes can feel the warmth of Travis’s smile. “I’ll see you then.”

They hang up, and the butterflies continue to dance through his belly, but it’s a good kind of nervous. Wes thinks he could get used to it.

\---

The next couple of weeks are a blur of Laundry Days and get-togethers (“They’re not dates, Kendall, will you stop _calling_ them that?”) and Wes gets more and more comfortable around Travis. Not quite as comfortable as he is with Kendall, but she’s had so much more time to get around his defenses. All things considered, Travis is doing pretty well.

The first time Wes says something sharp and sarcastic, Travis gapes at him long enough Wes fears he’s made a terrible social blunder. But then Travis grins and smacks his shoulder lightly, saying, “Damn, Wes! Who knew you had a mouth like that? Just think of all the witty banter we can share now!”

The distance between them gets smaller. Travis stands a little closer, touches him a bit more—little things, light touches to his elbow or fingers, playful bumps against his shoulder. At one point, when they go out to a movie, Travis stretches his arm across the back of Wes’s seat. Wes stiffens, but after a few minutes when nothing happens, he relaxes, and that’s that.

He expects Kendall to make all sorts of snide remarks, to tease him about how they’re dating (they’re not) but all she says on the matter is, “I like it when you’re chipper. You cook more, and your cooking is always great.”

If this is what being friends with Travis is like, Wes decides, then he really should have mustered up the courage to approach Travis a long time ago.

\---

And then Travis kisses him, and all of Wes’s conceptions get thrown for a loop.

It’s the end of another dinner. Travis finally convinced Wes to cook for him, so Wes made stuffed chicken breasts and pasta salad, with chocolate lava cake for dessert. It’s nothing particularly fancy, but Travis moans and groans through every bite like it’s 5-star cuisine, praising his cooking skills until Wes is red in the face with giddy pleasure.

It happens as they’re clearing the table. Wes has the remains of the chocolate lava cake in his hands and he’s heading to Travis’s trailer to find plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge, and without warning Travis leans over and presses a light, quick kiss against his lips. It’s a nothing kiss, a barely-there kiss, and Wes almost drops the cake.

“Sorry.” Travis pulls back, walls up in his eyes. He does that, sometimes, takes a step back without moving a muscle, and the most Wes can figure is he seems to do it when he’s nervous. “Sorry, I should have asked.”

Wes licks his lips, and blinks a little. “No. It was…It was fine.” His voice cracks in the middle, which is so fucking embarrassing Wes wouldn’t mind crawling in a hole right now, except it makes Travis grin and his eyes crinkle up at the corners so maybe the hole will have to wait. He clears his throat. “It was fine.”

“Yeah?” Travis relaxes a little, shoulders dropping, but the walls in his eyes don’t come down completely. “I’m glad.”

And Wes suddenly knows what he has to do, and it’s terrifying, more terrifying then pretty much anything he’s ever done. _You can do this_ , he tells himself, _you’re Injustice, you can do anything._

But somehow it’s so much easier to be brave in a mask.

Gently, he sets the cake down on the table and steps into Travis’s personal space. Travis watches him, paradoxically still—like he’s so violently holding himself motionless he’ll break if he moves even an inch.

He leans forward, just a few inches separating them. “I like you,” he whispers, “even if you are a cop.”

Then he closes the distance and presses their lips together.

He keeps his eyes open just long enough to watch the walls fall down like Jericho, Travis’s gaze full of warmth and cheer and a thousand other things Wes can almost feel. Then he closes his eyes and lets Travis sweep him away.

\---

He stumbles in a quarter to midnight, dazed and giddy on endorphins and possibility. Kendall, a night owl by nature, looks up from the couch and gives him the stinkeye.

“Are you drunk? Don’t throw up on any of my stuff.”

“I’m not drunk.” Wes falls inelegantly onto the end of the couch, unable to keep the huge, goofy grin off his face. “Travis kissed me.” The grin, impossibly, widens. “And I kissed him back.”

The reply, when it comes, is annoyingly indifferent. “So?”

“ _So?”_ Wes twists towards her, waving an emphatic hand. “ _So_ you should be happy for me! That was the first time we kissed.”

The redhead’s eyes widen, making her look like a startled deer or rabbit or some other small cute animal. “Really?”

Indignation pokes holes in his happy haze. “Hey! It’s perfectly possible someone like Travis would want to kiss me!” And he’s a little hurt she’s so surprised by it, actually.

Kendall flaps her hand, waving his words away. “No, no, that’s not it. I just thought…I mean, you’ve been dating for a month, so I figured you’ve been doing a lot more than kissing all this time.”

Wes stares at her.

“What?”

\---

“Kendall says we’ve been dating for a month.”

Travis chews thoughtfully. “Really? Feels like longer than that.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” Wes declares triumphantly, and then his brain catches up with his ears. “Wait, what?”

The other man counts on his fingers, mumbling under his breath. He looks up and nods. “No, yeah, you’re right. It’s a month. Well, it’s just shy of, but same diff.”

Wes gapes at him. “Travis, we’re not dating.”

“Sure we are.” Travis takes another bite, talking with his mouth full, which should be disgusting but—no, it’s still disgusting, but somehow, when it’s Travis, Wes can tolerate it more. “Our first date was that night after you brought my laundry detergent over.”

Wes ignores his food in favor of more incredulous staring. “That was just…dinner.”

“A dinner _date_ , as a matter of fact.” Travis counts off on his fingers. “Since then we’ve had lots of dates. Movies and dinners and even just walking around. I gotta say, this easing into things is really interesting. Not usually how I do it, but it’s kind of making things _better_. More intense or something.”

Wes flails his fork. “But you only kissed me a few days ago! If it’s been a month, why didn’t you do it before? Why didn’t you _say_ anything?”

“I thought you knew.”

“Oh, come on.”

“No, really, I did.” Apparently this conversation deserves his full attention, because Travis sets down his fork. “See, I thought the whole ‘can I borrow your detergent’ thing was a line. Which I was totally down for, okay. Then, when we started going out, I thought you were just shy, waiting for me to make the first move. But you weren’t picking up on any of my signals, so I figured you wanted to take it slow, which, hey, cool, march to the beat of your own drum, man.”

Travis sits back, tapping his fingers on the table. “And then I realized you’re just socially awkward and probably had no clue, so I gave you a sign you couldn’t possibly misinterpret.”

“The kiss?” Wes clarifies.

“The kiss,” Travis confirms.

This is strange. And incredibly unsettling. Wes now understands the saying about the rug being pulled out from under him, because it does, in fact, feel a bit like the floor has opened up beneath his feet and he’s falling. 

“How did I miss this?” He’s a _lawyer_. He should be able to read things better than this.

“Socially awkward,” Travis says helpfully. Wes scowls at him. “I think it’s cute.”

He didn’t used to be like this. Wes is _certain_ of that. Once upon a time, he was normal, and then he broke and put himself back together wrong.

_You have the romantic sense of a goldfish_ , Kendall told him, and it turns out she’s more right than he realized.

Travis fidgets in his seat. “We can go back to before, if you want,” he offers reluctantly. “I mean, I really, _really_ liked making out the other night, but if you wanna just be friends…that’s cool too.”

He doesn’t sound like it’s cool at all. But the fact that he’s even offering...

Wes gives him an awkward smile. “The making out was really nice. Even if I did feel like a teenager. I just figured I’d be more observant.”

“Well,” Travis says grandly, leaning back, “ _you’re_ not a trained detective, and _I_ am, so it kind of makes sense.”

This is the first time Travis has referenced his job and Wes hasn’t cringed. Maybe this could work out after all.

He picks up his fork again, poking his food. “Socially awkward?”

“Absolutely,” Travis deadpans, “but I like you anyway. Wanna make out later?”

Wes snorts into his plate, and the tension breaks. It’s kind of a bit perfect.

\---

“Huh.”

Wes pauses halfway through the living room, staring at Kendall. “What?”

“Nothing.” The redhead eyes him, a contemplative look on her face. “I just don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.”

He looks down at himself, but can’t see anything out of the ordinary. His clothes aren’t new, and he can’t see any weird stains or anything. “What?” he repeats, more confused than ever.

“Really, it’s nothing.” She looks down at her tablet. “It’s good to see you happy. You should smile more.”

Oh.

\---

The last time Wes felt like this was…God, he can’t even remember. How sad is that? Surely he’s been _happy_ before, right?

It’s not just Kendall who notices—Laura at work is the first one to say something, and he gets a few comments from a couple of clients and the woman at the supermarket. It makes Wes stop one day, look in the mirror and take stock.

He doesn’t notice any difference, nothing visible. It’s not as though the lines around his eyes and mouth have disappeared, or the shape of his face has changed. He’s not wearing a sign saying he’s dating someone fantastic that makes him giddy and ecstatic. So how does everyone know? 

“You smile a lot more,” Kendall says absently when he asks, more absorbed in her tablet than his question. “And you seem lighter, or something. I don’t know. Go ask Travis, I’m busy.”

Travis is just about as unhelpful as Kendall. “Power of love, baby,” he chirps, snapping his fingers and flashing finger guns at Wes, which is ridiculous and juvenile and still makes Wes chuckle.

If he’s been happy before, he decides, it certainly wasn’t like _this_.

\---

The stack of junk on the kitchen table wobbles precariously as he passes it, and the round metal ball on top of the stack rolls for freedom. Wes reaches out automatically, catching it before it can hit the floor, recognizing it as one of Kendall’s inventions, a tiny metal orb with a bright blue button on one side. He frowns, turning it in his hands and studying it.

The front door opens, and Kendall says, “Hey Wes.” He looks up, a greeting on his lips that dies when he sees the wide-eyed stare aimed his direction. His alarm instantly skyrockets.

“What?”

“Wes, could you, uh…be careful? That’s a bomb.”

Wes very valiantly does not toss the orb away like they’re playing Hot Potato, and instead gently sets it on the table, in a spot where it will not inadvertently fall. “Why,” he asks in an amazingly calm voice, if he says so himself, “is there a bomb on the kitchen table?”

“Because that’s where I was working on it. _Duh_.”

“Oh. Yes, of course, what a silly question.” Wes rolls his eyes. “Why were you working out here? Don’t you usually do this sort of thing in your room?”

She shrugs as she walks past him. “No space. I ran out of room like a week ago.” She disappears into her room, returning a moment later without her bag. “You didn’t say anything, so I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“I didn’t even _notice_.”

“I’m realizing that. And honestly, I should stop giving your observational skills so much credit.” Carefully, Kendall picks up the bomb, pressing something then twists something else, and puts it back on the table. “You know, for a lawyer, you’re pretty clueless. It’s kind of sad.”

“Shut up.” Wes frowns, looking around the apartment, and only now does he realize that there’s actually quite a lot of Kendall’s stuff around. Most of it is cluttered on the kitchen table, bits and bobs and wires and tools, half-finished gadgets she’s been tinkering with. But there are at least three new appliances in the kitchen that have a particularly Kendall-esque touch, and half a dozen pieces of paper on the coffee table, covered in schematics and blueprints.

It reminds him a bit of when she first moved in. She brought all her tech stuff over because of Injustice, and then the rest of her stuff migrated over time “because it’s so much easier to just be here all the time than commute up a flight of stairs, you know, and this way if I have a brilliant idea and whip something up in the middle of the night, you’ll be right here to test it, so what do you say? Wanna be roomies?”

(He’d caved, of course, more because he’d been lonely and depressed than the Injustice thing, but he didn’t tell her that.)

(He’s pretty sure she knew, anyway. She’s good like that.)

“No space, you said,” he repeats absently, looking around the room at all of Kendall’s brilliance on display.

“Well, you know how it is.” The redhead shrugs and opens the fridge, sticking her head inside so her next words come out muffled. “Output is greater than use, yadda yadda. I did think about selling some of my stuff online, but then I realized I didn’t know what shenanigans those weirdos would do, and better my inventions in the hands of the villain I know than the one I don’t.”

“Anti-hero,” Wes corrects, staring at the bomb again, sitting so innocuously on the table.

Kendall’s head pops up above the fridge door, frowning at him. “You know, I really don’t think that word means what _you_ think it means.”

“Right,” Wes mutters, only paying half a mind. Something just occurred to him, and it’s not a good thought. “I need to go check something. No more bombs on the kitchen table, okay?”

He darts for his room before she can even ask.

\---

There’s dust on his briefcase. There’s not a lot of dust—it’s a layer as thin as paper on the top of the leather, so even he’d almost think it was just the color of the briefcase. Except he swipes a finger across the surface and cuts right through the dust, leaving a dark streak, and Wes can only stand there with his stomach dropping through the floor.

There’s dust on his briefcase. There wasn’t a day that would go by that he didn’t put on his costume, and now it’s been so long dust has collected and Wes can’t even remember how that happened.

No wonder Kendall had to take over the living room and kitchen. Injustice hasn’t been using her inventions, so there’s nowhere to put them.

Slowly, he sinks to the floor, staring at his briefcase.

How did he let this happen?

\---

The first time he went out, he didn’t have a costume. He wasn’t even intending to do anything. He couldn’t sleep, so he pulled on a jacket and took a walk. He walked for ages, lost in his own thoughts, and then he’d passed an alley and saw a mugging. His first instinct, like any good city-goer’s, was to duck his head and just keep walking, because it wasn’t his problem.

But he couldn’t walk away. Something made him turn back, an instinct that said that mugging was his problem and he had to _do_ something about it, or he’d never be able to live with himself. So he turned back, stepped into that alley, and demanded the man leave his victim alone.

It ended badly, of course. He’d had maybe three self-defense classes in his life, and no formal training in any kind of fighting. The mugger probably hadn’t had any formal training either, but he’d been in a street fight or two, and easily overpowered Wes.

He’d gone home with a black eye and a split lip he’d had a tough time explaining at work the next day, and bruises that plagued him for weeks. But the mugger’s victim ran off while Wes was occupying the mugger, and that was worth every bruise and pain.

He’d _saved_ someone.

The costume came later. That first night, it was about saving someone, _anyone_ , no matter what it cost him. It’s _always_ been about saving people, even if his vendetta against the police overshadowed that to everyone else.

Somehow, he managed to forget that.

\---

The moment he slips the mask over his head, he feels it settle over him again: a sense of purpose, of righteousness, the need to put things right. He stands in front of the mirror, studying the image reflected back at him. As easy as that, ‘Wes Mitchell’ slips away, fades into the background, leaving only Injustice.

How could he have forgotten this?

\---

“I need your superhero expertise,” Wes says at work the next morning, and Jeff almost spills his coffee in his lap. 

“I thought you didn’t like superheroes,” the other lawyer says.

“Indulge me.” Wes clasps his hands and leans forward, hopefully portraying only a vague curiosity and not how intensely personal this is. Jeff doesn’t need to know all of that. “Tell me about Injustice.”

“Um.” Jeff blinks and swivels his chair to face Wes’s desk. “Okay. What do you, uh, want to know?”

“What’s he been up to recently?”

Wes knows exactly what he’s been up to recently: Not a whole lot. But he’s always been overly critical of himself, so he wants to know if his brief respite is really as bad as he thinks it is. And there’s no one better to go to for that than his coworker.

Jeff frowns, mentally sifting through the information he has. “Well, the last big appearance he made was a few months back, when he crashed that police charity ball. He was seen around the city for a while after that, but a few weeks ago he dropped off the grid. Some people think he’s gearing up for something big.”

“Some people,” Wes repeats slowly. “And the other people?”

Jeff shifts uncomfortably. “Well. Uh. They say he was probably, um, scared off by Golden Boy at the charity ball, and that’s why he hasn’t really been seen since.”

It’s nothing Wes hasn’t thought himself. But it’s one thing to merely suspect it and another to hear it said aloud.

“Thanks, Jeff,” he mutters, turning back to his desk. He doesn’t get back to work right away, though—for a long time, he just sits there, tapping his pen and thinking.

\---

It’s been almost two months since Injustice has made a public appearance, and weeks since he even bothered to go out on patrol. He used to go out every night, no matter what, and now…

The only thing that’s changed in his life recently is Travis.

\---

“We need to do something,” Wes announces before the door has even fully closed. He tosses his jacket and briefcase on the counter, hands spread before him. “Something _big_. Something to show everyone Injustice hasn’t dropped off the grid completely.”

Kendall beams, fingers already tapping at her tablet. “Let me find something… Oh, sweet, there’s some sort of award ceremony happening on Sunday.” 

Wes grins. “Perfect.”

\---

Wes plans and plots and schemes all week long.

Then he walks into the Laundromat on Saturday and Travis smiles at him and everything flies right out of his head, and Wes now knows exactly why he hasn’t been performing his duties as Injustice lately.

Still, when Travis says, “Hey babe,” and presses a kiss to his cheek, a rush of butterflies sweeps through his stomach, and Wes is overwhelmed with the affection he feels for the other man.

He’s torn. Injustice is _important_ , he’s something essential in a system that’s broken beyond repair. More importantly, Injustice gives Wes something to fight for again. He can’t just give that up.

But Travis…

Travis is _Travis_.

He can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

\---

“I know Sunday is usually our date night,” Wes says while their clothes are spinning in adjacent washers. He stretches his legs out before him, noting a scuff on the toe of one shoe he’ll have to take care of tonight. “But something came up at work. I’m going to have to cancel.”

Beside him, Travis slumps, a gusty exhale. “You know, I’m really glad you said that, because I was trying to figure out how to cancel date night all morning.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Work stuff for me too. I mean, mine didn’t come up suddenly or anything, I just, you know, totally forgot about it.” Travis shrugs, sheepish. “Sorry for ruining your routine.”

And Travis knows how much Wes likes his routines. He leans over, bumps their shoulders together. “It’s okay. We’ll just make it up.”

“Sounds good.” Travis slouches on the bench, draping his arm around Wes’s shoulders in a way that’s not casual at all. Wes bites back a grin and leans against the other man, soaking up his warm presence.

He’s torn. Injustice is _important_ , and Wes doesn’t know what he’d do without the costume.

But Travis is important too.

\---

It was easier before. When it was just him and Kendall, fighting the world with a costume and crazy gadgets cobbled out of spare parts. When he was, for the most part, _alone_.

Travis has confused everything, and Wes doesn’t know what to do about that.

“Wes?” Kendall snaps her fingers in front of his face, drawing his attention back to her. “Are you even listening at all?”

“Um.” He straightens, tries to look attentive. “Yes.”

She sighs and rolls her eyes. “Fine, we’ll take it from the top. _This_ is your new-and-improved flash grenade, guaranteed to blind them for at _least_ a full minute or your money back. And _this_ is a brand spanking-new force shield, made to withstand, like, a semi driving into it. Whether it will hold up to Golden Boy’s punches, we’ll have to see...”

This time, Wes doesn’t let his mind wander. Travis is a distraction he can’t afford right now. He’ll deal with it later.

\---

The award ceremony is being held in the plaza in front of city hall. It’s a big, wide-open space, and as far as the eye can see it’s full of cops. Wes studies the set-up, mentally calculating entrances and escape routes, trying to spot all the security that’s sure to be here.

“Maybe you should hold off on this one,” Kendall had said at the last minute, right before he left. “I mean, there will always be another _something_.”

“I haven’t done anything in weeks,” Wes pointed out, strapping one last flash-bomb to his belt. “If I don’t show up, they’re going to think I died.”

“You haven’t done anything in weeks, which means they’ll expect you to do something _huge_ and they’ll have all the stops pulled out,” Kendall retorted, biting her thumbnail. “So maybe doing this one isn’t a great idea.”

“It’ll be fine, Ken,” he reassured her, giving her a peck on the cheek. “I’ll be back in time for dinner.”

It hadn’t wiped the worried look off her face, and she’d given him a fervent, “Good luck,” as he left.

Looking at the tableau before him, Wes can’t spot any extra security measures like he’d expect if they thought he was going to do something spectacular. He can’t see Golden Boy’s distinctive gold costume in the sea of blue, either, but that’s not a real surprise; the hero has a tendency to wait until Injustice has made his first move before making an appearance. 

Despite Kendall’s reservations, it looks like just another award ceremony that deserves Injustice’s attention.

Which probably means they’re setting up some sort of trap, hoping to lure him into the open then catch him. But that’s no different than usual.

Wes grins to himself behind his mask and prepares to make his entrance.

They built a stage at the front of the plaza, and as he watches, the police commissioner steps up, waving for silence. Gradually, the crowd settles, and the commissioner leans forward, speaking into the microphone.

“Thank you all for coming today. It is my honor to present these awards to these outstanding members of the force…”

Injustice grins and thumbs a smoke bomb off his belt.

Showtime.

\---

The first time Injustice struck against the police was less than a month after Kendall started helping him. With the aid of her tech, he made his first citizen’s arrest, a couple of guys ripping off a local liquor store. Now he didn’t have to just scare off muggers and get beaten up in alleys anymore. Now he had the tools to help people, to actually make a difference!

Except when he brought the robbers to the police, instead of thanking him or congratulating him, they pulled their weapons and demanded he come with them. And sure, he’d known that the police didn’t adore superheroes and they _really_ didn’t like vigilantes that weren’t affiliated with the League, but he hadn’t expected a reaction like _that_.

He’d had to use the last of his flash bombs and punch one officer to get away. Three hours later, the police were on TV claiming they’d been assaulted by a new villain in town.

Less than a week later, Injustice made the first strike in his vendetta against the police force.

\---

If there’s one thing Injustice can be certain of, it’s that no matter where he appears, Golden Boy is sure to follow. Ever since the first time they met, he’s been a thorn in the anti-hero’s side, always bursting onto the scene and ruining Injustice’s plans.

Golden Boy doesn’t usually bring his friends along, though.

It started out well enough. With the use of specifically-placed flash and smoke bombs, he made it onto the stage. A liberal shot of Sticky Slime (a Zehetner original, to stick one thing to another pretty much permanently; Wes has used it to repair things at home all the time) glued the police commissioner to the podium and Injustice took the stage.

He barely got two words out before Golden Boy had appeared out of nowhere, leaping onto the stage from the crowd. Seriously, Wes doesn’t know how he missed him in that gaudy gold-and-black costume.

And then the other two heroes had emerged, blocking the ends of the stage and throwing a twist in his plan.

“Huh.” Injustice puts his hands on his hips, looking from one hero to the other. “This is new. What, you couldn’t beat me on your own? Had to call in backup?”

Golden Boy shuffles sheepishly, shrugging. “Wasn’t my idea. The League figured better safe than sorry.”

“And that’s why I don’t join things. It’s just a pain.”

This is the first time he’s seen these two up close and in person; usually the only hero he deals with is Golden Boy. But he recognizes them, from countless TV appearances. Spectre, in purple and dove grey, and Jetstrike, in navy and white, the female duo that typically works farther north. If they were called in, the League must have _really_ thought he was doing something big.

All this expectation makes him kind of annoyed he’s _not_ planned anything bigger, now. Sure, he only had like three days to come up with a plan of attack, but _still_. It’s the principle of the thing.

“All this for little old me?” he coos mockingly, “Why, I’m _touched_. Look at you, all swooping in to protect _them_.” He makes a grand gesture at the assembled police force. They aren’t rushing the stage—they know the drill. When the heroes arrive, the cops take a step back. (It’s one of the things that make the police so sore about heroes in general, but it’s handy for situations like this.)

He scoffs, shakes his head. “And why? Because they’re doing such a _great_ job? It’d be better if we started over completely.”

The hero throws his hands in the air. “Dammit, man, what the hell is your _problem?”_

The question makes Injustice pause for a moment; he’s not sure anyone has ever asked him that before. The media always paints him as a villain without asking questions or fact-checking, and Kendall, who has the most right to ask, has never bothered.

And he knows Golden Boy is asking rhetorically, he isn’t looking for a serious answer, but the truth bursts out of him before he can stop himself. “My _problem_ is that everyone holds the LAPD up as the paradigm of justice, and they’re _not!_ They let criminals roam the streets, find the easiest solution to a problem, and people _die!”_

His voice cracks on the last word, and Golden Boy rears back, eyes widening. Wes winces behind his mask. Too much, he let too much through, revealed too much to a man who doesn’t need to know. _And_ he did it in front of two other heroes, that’s just _awesome_. This is what happens when he gets distracted, loses focus.

To get things back on track, Injustice pulls another bomb from his belt and tosses it at Golden Boy’s feet. There’s no way he’s going to try and fight _three_ superheroes. He didn’t bring nearly enough of Kendall’s tech for that. Better to make an escape now and try again later.

And at least this way he showed the city that he’s not down for the count. He may have been distracted lately, but he’s determined to change that.

Bemused, Golden Boy picks up the beeping orb. “What’s this?” he quips, “Another little smoke bomb?”

The bomb goes off in his hands.

Wes has worked with all kinds of bombs before—they’re one of those things Kendall is very good at making. Smoke bombs, flash bombs, little firecrackers and larger detonations. They’re good as distractions and diversions, they cause property damage in the right quantity, and they’re more versatile than ray guns, no matter how much Kendall talks about ray guns.

This bomb is like none of those. This is _big_ , a fiery explosion that tears out of Golden Boy’s hands, sweeping across the stage. There’s a blur of movement at his side, Spectre and Jetstrike rushing into action. Around him, people scream and dive out of the way, trying to avoid the worst of the blast.

All Wes can do is stand there.

Luckily, Golden Boy was standing with his back to the crowd. His invulnerable skin absorbs the majority of the explosion, burning his costume to ash and diverting the energy towards the back of the stage. Spectre leaps forward, grabbing the glued-down police commissioner, and phases them both out of reality, the force of the blast sweeping right through them. Jetstrike grabs half a dozen people standing behind the stage, flying straight up, clear of the blast.

Kendall’s force shield works perfectly. The blast ripples around Injustice, a bright blue bubble of energy surrounding him, and though he feels the heat, none of it touches him.

It seems to go on forever, a roar of fire and flames. When it finally dies down, Wes can still hear it rushing past his ears, and all he can do is stare at the burnt wreckage at his feet.

People are crying, people who didn’t make it out of the blast in time, who got caught in the edge of the explosion. Sirens are screaming, and he can hear the _whup-whup-whup_ of a helicopter, the news recording everything.

Louder than all of that is Golden Boy’s horrified whisper.

“What the hell did you do?”

Wes looks up, sick to his stomach, and does the only thing he can.

He flees.

\---

The first time Injustice met Golden Boy, Injustice had just turned the precinct into an Arctic tundra with a specially-prepared freeze bomb and was walking through, admiring his work, especially all the police officers frozen midstep. Golden Boy, who was apparently immune to the cold the same way he was immune to any type of physical injury, burst through the walls and quickly put a stop to that.

All in all, not the best first impression, and it solidly wrote Golden Boy as Injustice’s nemesis.

The second time Injustice met Golden Boy, Injustice had swapped the minds of an entire canine unit with their handlers. It was a much better solution, he felt, as dogs were loyal and good, and maybe the cops would learn a thing or two inside their dogs’ bodies. Golden Boy had arrived before Injustice had finished, exhibited the first real display of his super strength by kicking Injustice ten feet through a window, and reversed the changes.

Wes had ended up with three cracked ribs and vomited blood for an hour, and Kendall had hurried to whip up Version 2.0 of her healing device.

The third time Injustice met Golden Boy, it was at the scene of a burning building. He hadn’t set the fire—on the contrary, he was throwing everything he had at the flames, doing his best to get the trapped tenants out. He’d been standing there with two freezebombs in his hands and a slippery floor of ice at his feet, trying to clear a path, when the hero arrived. Golden Boy took one look at the scene, tightened his jaw, and started helping.

After, when the last of the civilians were out and the firefighters were working on putting out the flames, Golden Boy and Injustice sat on a nearby roof. Injustice was coughing up smoke; Golden Boy was barely breathing hard.

“Is this when you take me in?” Injustice asked, in between bouts of oxygen-starved hacking.

Golden Boy stared at the crowd below, at the people they’d saved together. “I don’t get you, man,” he murmured, shaking his head.

Injustice coughed into his glove a few more times. “What’s to get? I hate the police, not everybody else.”

The hero made a small sound, abruptly standing up. “See you next time,” he’d said, and he turned on his heel and walked away.

Injustice stared at his retreating back, wishing he could know what was going through the hero’s mind.

\---

Injustice doesn’t hurt people. It’s one of the rules he lives by. He may cause property damage and mayhem; he’ll happily transform people into animals, or freeze them solid, or swap their brains. He does everything he can to cause trouble for the police, and to the League as well, but anything he does to people can be reversed, with the proper know-how.

He doesn’t hurt people, and he definitely doesn’t kill people. If he did, he’d be no better than the villain they always accuse him of being.

He’s not a bad guy. He’s just trying to make a point they’re too stupid to hear. And when he’s not going up against the police, he’s out on the streets, trying to help the civilian population as best he can, despite the misconceptions against him.

Injustice _doesn’t hurt people._

He doesn’t…

\---

Wes rips off his mask and throws up in the closest alley he can find.

It doesn’t help. He can still smell the scorched smoke on his clothes, can still hear the pained cries in his ears.

_“What the hell did you do?”_

Wes leans over and throws up again.

\---

Kendall isn’t there when he gets home. Wes has enough time to strip out of his costume and change, wash his hands, and throw up again before he hears the front door slam open, which is _fantastic_ because too long and he wouldn’t have been angry enough to really tear into her.

He storms out of the bathroom. “What the _hell_ was that?”

“I’m so sorry!” Kendall is frantic, eyes wide and hair a flyaway tangle, like she ran all the way here. “I had no idea! I mixed up the bombs!”

“How do you mix up _bombs?”_

“They were sitting right next to each other!” She grabs two metal orbs from the table, holding them next to one another. “See? _This_ is a smoke bomb, and _this_ is the big bomb. I just wasn’t looking close enough!”

The two orbs are identical, except the detonation button on the smoke bomb is a small blue circle, and the button on the other bomb is a red triangle.

Wes takes both bombs from her, holding them in shaking hands, and demands, “What made you _possibly_ think _identical bombs_ was a _good idea_ , Kendall? What were you _thinking?!”_

She flinches and wails, “I’m _sorry_ , I wasn’t!”

Wes turns, stalks across the living room. He feels like he’s going to be sick again. “Was anyone killed?”

“No. _No_.” 

“You’re sure?” He turns back to her, practically pleading. God, if he _killed_ someone—

“I swear, I’ve been listening to the police bands and no one’s died.” She lets out a shaky breath. “There are over a dozen casualties, but no one died.”

Thank _god_. Wes closes his eyes, knees weak with relief. If he’d killed someone…

He already has one innocent’s life weighing on his soul. If anyone else had died, he could never live with himself.

“Okay.” He opens his eyes and pins Kendall with his sharpest glare. “First things first. You’re going to dismantle _all_ of these bombs. And next time, if you make something like this, you _don’t_ make it look identical to something else.”

“I’m already on it.” She grabs her pack, scoops up all the devices on the kitchen table, and heads for her room.

Halfway down the hall, she freezes and goes, “Oh, _shit_.”

“What?” Wes’s head snaps up, alarm thrumming through him. “What is it?”

Slowly, Kendall turns back to him, face a perfect mask of horror. “I just thought of something bad.”

“ _What?”_

She swallows, almost tentatively asking, “Didn’t Travis have a work thing today?”

Wes’s heart drops through the floor.

\---

No. Oh god, _no_. Bad enough he hurt all those other people without intending to, but if he hurt _Travis_ —

If he hurt Travis, he’s done. He can’t—

_No_. Not Travis, please, _not Travis_ —

\---

Injustice doesn’t hurt people.

He’s _not supposed to hurt people._

\---

He runs straight to Travis’s warehouse, banging on the door and calling frantically for the other man. Travis doesn’t answer, which simply means he’s not home, it doesn’t mean he was _there_ at the plaza, it doesn’t mean he’s _hurt_ , lying in a hospital, one of the dozen casualties wounded in the blast, it doesn’t mean _anything_ —

“Travis!” he shouts again, slapping a hand against the warehouse door.

That’s when he realizes he still has two bombs in his hands.

“Oh, jesus _fuck!”_ Wes manages, barely, not to drop the bombs. Why did he even…? He must have rushed out without realizing he still had them, so worried about Travis, and now he’s standing here with a couple of _bombs_ , one of which sent a dozen people to the hospital today and could have hurt so many more. Could have _killed_ so many more.

God. This is all such a fucking _mess_.

Wes thumps his forehead against the metal warehouse door. “I just want to help people,” he whispers, voice breaking. His throat is tight, and he can feel tears in his eyes, and he’s about ten seconds from breaking down completely, not just about this but about everything else he hasn’t allowed himself to dwell on, hasn’t had _time_ to dwell on because he had to be Injustice, the city needed Injustice to help, but Injustice isn’t working anymore so where does that leave him, and where the _fuck_ is Travis?

“Wes?”

Wes has enough presence of mind to shove the bombs in his pocket before he whirls around. What he sees makes the tears spill forth without reservation, and he’s so relieved he can’t even be embarrassed about the show of emotion.

Travis is standing there, just standing on the sidewalk, his look of faint curiosity transforming to mild alarm at the sudden swell of tears. “Wes?” He takes a step forward. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“You’re okay.” Wes can’t move, can’t seem to get his legs to work. “You’re okay.”

Travis’s face goes blank and baffled. “What? Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You said you had a work thing, and I-I saw the news. I thought…I was afraid that…”

The confusion shifts to comprehension, and Travis moves forward, arms outstretched. “Oh, hey, no. No, baby, I’m okay.”

Travis steps close enough, and Wes reaches out, grabs his jacket, and yanks him close, crashing their mouths together. It’s messy and inelegant, but _god_ , Wes is just _so relieved_ he can’t help himself. He needs that reassurance, needs to feel Travis against him, needs to _know_ even though his eyes are telling him Travis is right here in front of him.

Travis brings his arms up, wrapping around him, and he gentles the kiss, softens it. “It’s okay, I’m okay,” he whispers against Wes’s lips, and it almost makes a new wave of tears come spilling out.

Carefully, Travis pulls away, but he doesn’t go far—just enough for the both of them to catch their breaths. “I’m okay, Wes, I promise. I didn’t get hurt.”

A shudder wracks Wes’s frame, and he clutches Travis’s jacket and collapses against the other man, burying his face in Travis’s neck. He could have hurt Travis, _lost_ Travis, all for _nothing_. He’d accomplished _nothing_ today, and he _could have lost Travis_. 

“God _dammit!”_

Travis’s arms tighten protectively, and he presses a light kiss to the top of Wes’s head. “Come on,” he urges, “let’s go inside.”

Wes clings to Travis and follows him in.

\---

They’re barely inside Travis’s trailer when Wes pulls back, tugging the other man’s jacket off his shoulders. 

“Wes?”

Wes reaches for the hem of Travis’s shirt, but Travis is there first, grasping his wrists in a surprisingly strong grip. The other man catches his gaze, a frown tugging his lips down. “Baby, I’m _okay_.”

“You smell like smoke,” Wes says flatly.

With a sigh, Travis slowly releases Wes’s wrists, and Wes grabs the bottom of Travis’s shirt and yanks it over his head. He only pauses momentarily at the rich expanse of skin before him before he reaches out again, running his hands over Travis’s chest, checking or burns or scrapes or—or _anything_ , any injury that means he hurt Travis.

There’s nothing. Wes circles around, does the same with Travis’s back, and Travis suffers the inspection without comment, though Wes can practically feel the comments his boyfriend is so valiantly holding back.

Travis’s back is unscathed. Wes returns to Travis’s front and reaches for his belt buckle.

“Wow, okay, just—hold up a second.” Once more, Wes’s wrists are caught up, and though he snarls and twists his grip, he can’t break free. “Wes, hey, it’s _fine_.”

“No it’s _not!”_

“It _is!_ And as much as I love the direction this is heading, you’re upset, so we really shouldn’t—”

“Travis.” Wes glares at him, leaning so close their noses are almost touching. “Shut. The hell. Up.”

With a big, heavy sigh, Travis presses a light kiss to his lips and mutters, “Fine, but I tried.”

Wes ignores him and returns to the task at hand.

\---

He knew he felt…strongly for Travis, knew it the moment he realized he’d gotten distracted from Injustice. Injustice has ruled his life for so long now, has taken up so much of his energy and time and attention, and Wes had figured he’d never put the masked vigilante to rest until he’d accomplished his goal.

But Travis usurped that, made him forget about the costume and the vigilante. Because Travis is…Travis is the one who…

Wes can’t admit it, not even to himself. If he says it, then it becomes real, and that’s not… He doesn’t _deserve_ …

But it’s there.

\---

Wes presses his lips to every inch of skin he can find, fingers tracing everywhere he can reach, a constant, sensual reassurance that Travis is whole and healthy and _here_. That Wes didn’t inadvertently blow up the one person he—

Travis lays there passively, allowing Wes this exploration, a constant, quiet litany of, “It’s okay, Wes, I’m okay,” falling from his mouth until it becomes a soothing background hum, one more reassurance that Travis is alive and fine. 

He closes his eyes and sinks into Travis—into his scent, his taste, his heat, until the lines blur and the world falls away and it’s just them.

\---

_Travis, Travis, Travis!_

\---

He wakes slow, muzzy and disoriented, the way he always gets too early in the morning. So it takes him a few minutes to realize the person he’s clinging too so fiercely is Travis, who’s propped up on one elbow, watching him fondly.

“Morning, baby,” he says, and leans down to press a little kiss on the tip of Wes’s nose. Wes makes a vague sound of acknowledgement. “You want some breakfast? I make a mean omelet.”

_You_ , Wes thinks, _I want to stay here forever with you_. Oh, to just… _vanish_ , to run away from the world and never look back, no past to haunt him, no nightmares to remember, just him and Travis and the two of them. Oh what a lovely dream.

“Coffee,” he mumbles into Travis’s shoulder. “Coffee _coffee_.”

Travis chuckles, running his fingers through Wes’s hair. “I think I can manage that.” He makes a move towards the end of the bed, but Wes groans and tightens his arm. Travis pauses, then asks lightly, “You gonna let me go, babe?”

“Nnn…” In protest, Wes slings a leg over Travis’s knees and goes limp.

“Fine, fine,” Travis sighs, with laughter ringing in his words. “I guess we can stay like this a little longer.” And he settles back down beside Wes.

Perfect, Wes thinks. This is perfect. Ignore the world, just for a little longer.

\---

He can’t do this anymore.


	3. Track Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He picks up the costume in trembling hands, runs his fingers over the mask. A blindfold across the eyes, because justice is blind, but god, he’d been so blind all along.

_“ “It was a mistake,” you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.”_   
_—David Levithan, The Lover’s Dictionary_

\---

Travis hums while he cooks, bopping his head and swinging his hips. Wes sits at the trailer’s tiny table, coffee in hand, and watches him, gaze distant.

_Can I?_ he wonders, taking a sip of his coffee. _Can I really?_

Travis slides the first omelet onto a plate and brings it over, presenting it with a flourish. “For my good sir,” he says with a false accent so bad Wes can’t help but smile. “Why don’t you take this out front, we’ll eat on the patio.”

“I don’t know if a patch of Astroturf in a warehouse really counts as a patio,” Wes replies dryly, taking the plate and rising to his feet.

“Hey, you don’t get to make fun of my Astroturf, Mr. Apartment Dweller. Do you even have a balcony?”

“I have a fire escape,” Wes says archly, which just makes Travis hoot derisively.

“Ooh, a _fire escape_. Like that’s better than my _patio_.” Travis rolls his eyes, so comically exaggerated that Wes can’t help laughing.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“You know you love it.” Travis grins and waggles his eyebrows, and Wes chuffs another little laugh.

_I love_ —

_Can I?_

“I’ll meet you outside.”

“I’ll just be a minute!” Travis calls after him, words clipped by the closing door.

Wes sets his plate and mug on the patio table. Then he puts his hands flat on the table, locks his elbows, and just…braces himself. He closes his eyes and simply _breathes_.

_Can I really?_

\---

He has to choose. There’s no two ways about it. He can’t be Injustice _and_ have Travis. The past day has shown him that. He can’t do both, can’t make them work. He compartmentalizes too much, and the two choices are on such opposite ends of the spectrum.

Injustice is necessary. He’s been necessary for two years, ever since he got that phone call and he realized how horribly he’d failed, how horribly the _system_ had failed. A change needs to be made, and Injustice works towards that, tries to protect everyone in a system that’s broken. More than that, Injustice fills a hole inside him that’s been bleeding for two years straight, gave him something to work for when he’d lost everything else. Injustice brought him Kendall, the best friend he’s ever had, and gave him a sense of purpose, a reason to get up every morning. Injustice is _vital_.

Wes shoves his hands in his pockets, running his fingers over the surface of the bombs he’s carrying. Injustice is so important to him.

But Travis…oh, with _Travis_ …

With Travis, Wes _forgets_. He doesn’t think about the pain or the grief or the aching, crushing sense of failure. There’s no pressure, no drive to _do something_ , no urge to find some way to fill the gaping, hollow places inside him because Travis—he doesn’t fill the holes, but he makes them smaller, more manageable. Makes it a little easier to get through the day, because he knows there’s something waiting for him at the end of it.

He tilts his head back, staring blankly at the warehouse ceiling above him without really seeing it. 

God, Travis makes him _happy_. Happy like he hasn’t felt for two years, and he _knows_ Travis isn’t going to fix everything, knows it’s not that easy, but Travis makes Wes feels like maybe there’s still hope for him yet, maybe he hasn’t lost _everything_.

_(Can I really? Do I deserve—)_

He sighs, a gusty exhalation that does nothing to ease the turmoil in his brain, and asks the ceiling, “How am I supposed to choose?”

“Choose what?”

Wes startles and whips around. Travis stands beside the patio table, plate in hand, smiling quizzically. “Choose what?” he asks again, setting the plate down and crossing the space between them.

Wes takes a few breaths to calm his racing heart and shakes his head. The smile he gives Travis is almost convincing. “Nothing. Just…work stuff.”

One dark eyebrow goes up. “You’re thinking about _work_ right now?”

“You know how it is. It never ends,” Wes chuckles, leaning over to press a quick kiss to Travis’s lips. “Come on, let’s go eat.”

“Hang on.” Travis grabs his elbows, stopping him. “Before we start, I want to tell you something. It has to do with—with what happened yesterday.”

Travis’s face is serious, and a little nervous, and it makes the smile slip right off Wes’s face. “What?” he asks, taking his hands out of his pockets and mirroring Travis’s hold, gripping the other man’s elbows. “What is it?”

“It’s—” Travis runs a hand over his face with a huff. “Look, I—I’ve never done this before, so I’m not really sure how to—I’m sorry, do you need to get that?”

“Get that?” Wes parrots blankly. 

Travis points to Wes’s jacket. “That’s your phone beeping, right? If you want to get it, my thing can wait.”

Phone? No, Wes doesn’t have his phone on him, he left it at the apartment in his frantic rush to get to Travis last night. Frowning, Wes reaches into his pocket, pulling out—

The bomb beeps merrily, blinking in his palm.

“Oh _shit—!”_

Before he can come up with a plan, Travis grabs the bomb, whirls like a discus thrower to fling it across the warehouse, and tackles Wes against the side of the trailer.

Wes grunts with the impact, and then the world explodes.

\---

Sometimes Kendall is just _too_ good at what she does.

Build a bigger, better bomb in a smaller, easily-carried device?

She certainly managed that one.

\---

He is not charbroiled to a crisp. This is the first thing Wes realizes when the bulk of the explosion dies down. Which makes absolutely _zero_ sense because he is not invincible, he definitely isn’t wearing Kendall’s force shield, and the only thing between him and the blast was—

“ _Travis!”_ Wes’s eyes snap open, and he finds, to his horror, that the blast didn’t hit him because Travis covered him, protected Wes from the blast using _his own body_ and jesus christ, there’s _no way_ anyone could have survived that.

_Not him, please not him_. If he killed Travis—

Travis’s eyes snap open, and Wes’s brain freezes. “Come on!” says the man who shouldn’t, “We need to get out of here!” Travis grabs him and scoops him into his arms. Most of the warehouse is a blasted ruin; the rest is on fire. Moving like a man who was _not_ just caught in a massive fireball, Travis carries Wes towards the street, holding him like Wes weighs nothing at all.

He can feel Travis’s back, Wes realizes. With one arm wrapped around Travis’s neck, he can reach out and feel Travis’s bare back. There’s no injury, no burning, no—

No. No, _no_.

Travis halts across the street from his warehouse, gently setting Wes on his feet. “Are you okay?” he asks, frantic, “Did you get burned?”

Travis’s clothes are hanging off him in ruined, burned tatters; Wes can see the charred edges. He reaches out again, sliding his hand over unmarred flesh.

“What the _hell?”_

Travis shifts, looking sheepish. “That’s, uh, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You see, I’m…”

_No. Please, no._

“Uh, I’m Golden Boy.”

Wes’s legs give out.

\---

Wes has a grand total of six minor burns, from areas that Travis hadn’t been able to completely shield, and smoke in his lungs. He sits in the back of an ambulance, a shock blanket around his shoulders and an oxygen mask on his face, watching the scene before him in a numb sort of daze.

Travis stands in the middle of the street, in front of the ruined warehouse, with his hands on his hips and a shock blanket wrapped around his waist. Not because he’s in shock, but because his clothing is literally falling off and all of his other clothing burned up in the explosion. Flanking him are Spectre and Jetstrike, both in costume. (The duo had flown in not long after three black SUVs had arrived and spilled out a dozen League agents in black suits. They’d had the scene secured and the street locked down before the first responders had shown up.)

Now the three heroes are in a huddle with about four League agents, talking or plotting or whatever else is involved when this sort of thing happens.

God, how could he have _missed_ it? How often has he seen Golden Boy stand just like that? Hands on his hips, feet spread, shoulders back. It’s a classic hero pose, and one Golden Boy brings out pretty much every time they meet. How many times has he seen Travis make that exact same pose, usually when he’s feeling smug—probably without even realizing he’s doing it. 

And that jaw, that strong, sharp jaw, the one papers and magazines have written paragraphs about. He’s been close enough to see that jaw _so many times_ , usually when Golden Boy was about to punch him, so how did he not recognize it when he was kissing and licking his way along the bone?

It’s so _obvious_. How did he miss it?

One of the agents pulls back from the huddle and makes a gesture. Spectre grabs Jetstrike’s hand, and the two superheroes fly off; the agents disperse, two of them already on the phone; and Travis comes over to the ambulance.

“How’re you doing?” he asks, hovering beside the vehicle.

Wes just stares up at him, dazed, and wonders, _How did I miss it?_

“Wes?”

“He’s in shock,” snaps the EMT who’s been working on him, materializing behind Travis’s shoulder. She ducks around Travis’s side and picks up Wes’s wrist, tracking his pulse. “But really, that’s to be expected.”

“But he’s okay?”

“Uh-huh.” The EMT drops Wes’s wrist and pulls out her penlight, checking Wes’s eyes—again. Wes makes a small sound and pulls away, gaze still riveted to Travis. He can’t seem to stop looking.

“He’s got some minor burns on his arms and legs,” the EMT continues, “but it’s nothing major, no worse than touching a hot stove. He’ll be fine.”

“Good.” Travis sighs, relief making his shoulders slump. “That’s good. Can we have a minute?”

The EMT frowns, then points sternly at Wes. “Five more minutes with the mask, not a second less. I’ll come back and check on you.” With that, she steps away from the ambulance to consult with her partner.

Travis settles down beside Wes, hands fisted in his lap, like he has to hold himself back from wrapping Wes up in his arms. “Hey, baby.”

It’s the eyes, Wes thinks. Travis looks at him with such concern, so clearly worried about the near miss. But more than that, Travis looks at him fondly, indulgently, happily, like Wes is one of the best things to ever happen to him. 

Golden Boy has never looked at him like that. Golden Boy has only ever looked at Injustice with anger in his eyes, or with a cold derision. The few times he’s ever been without animosity, he’s merely thoughtful, contemplative; he never thaws and turns warm the way Travis does.

If Travis had ever looked at Wes the way Golden Boy looks at Injustice, Wes would have known right away, costume or no.

Travis sighs, looks down at his hands. “I’m sorry, Wes,” he says, his voice small and defeated, and that’s what Wes needs to snap him out of his daze.

“Wait, what? Why are you…?” This stupid mask is getting in the way. Wes reaches up to pull it off, but Travis is there first, gently gripping his wrist.

Despite himself, Wes flinches.

Travis drops his hand like it’s burned him, forcing a smile on his face that doesn’t reach his eyes. “You still have three more minutes, Wes, the EMT lady said so.” The smile drops as he looks down at his hands again. “I should have known something like this would happen. I should have…I have enemies, you see, and the whole _point_ of having a secret identity is to keep the people around us safe. But you weren’t, and for that, I’m sorry.”

_He doesn’t know_ , Wes realizes, staring dumbstruck at Travis once more. Okay, maybe that makes sense—if Travis realized Wes was Injustice, Wes wouldn’t merely be sitting here, he’d be locked in the back of one of those black SUVs and whisked away to wherever they keep supervillains.

But Wes is still sitting here, which means Travis thinks Injustice learned about his secret identity, found out about Wes, and then stuck a bomb in Wes’s pocket to blow them both up.

Wes doesn’t know if that’s better or worse than being found out.

“Enemies…” he says, for lack of anything better.

“Yeah.” Travis twists his hands together. Hands that can crush rock to dust, can punch through walls. Hands that have hurt him, injured him on so many occasions. (Hands that have touched him, held him, brought him to ecstasy and back down again.)

“His name’s Injustice,” Travis continues. “You’ve probably heard of him.”

“I might have, yes,” Wes responds dryly.

Travis doesn’t notice the sarcasm. “Something’s going on with him,” he mutters, more to himself than to Wes. “This isn’t like him.”

Well, isn’t that sweet. His nemesis doesn’t think this is Injustice’s style. That’d be amusing, in other circumstances.

The EMT pops up before Wes has to fill the conversational void. She helps take the mask off, checks his pulse and eyes again, and says, “All set. Make sure to take care of those burns.” As soon as steps back, Wes scrambles off the ambulance, distancing himself from Travis.

Travis stands, makes to follow, and Wes snaps his hand up. “No! Don’t!” Travis freezes, and Wes takes a few steps back, clutching the shock blanket around his shoulders. “I—I need some time, Travis. I need to…to think about some things.”

Travis slowly settles back. “Call me later?” he asks, and Wes is taken aback by how…how _small_ Travis sounds, small and plaintive and nothing like a superhero at all.

He opens his mouth, but he doesn’t have any words. There’s nothing he can say.

He turns and walks away.

\---

Travis is Golden Boy.

Golden Boy is Travis.

He can’t seem to reconcile the two.

\---

Kendall isn’t home. Small blessing. The last thing he needs is for her to fuss and fret and demand explanations when he’s not entirely sure he can explain it to himself. 

He takes a shower, scrubs away the smoke and dust and fear, the memory of Travis leaning over him, protecting him, _shielding_ him and he’d been _so afraid_ that Travis would be _gone_ , burnt to cinders saving Wes’s life, but he _wasn’t_ , he _isn’t_ because he’s—

Wes leans his forehead to the cool tile, water pounding against his back, and he breathes. Deep breaths, shaky breaths, watching the water swirl between his feet, letting his thoughts flow down the drain with the water until he’s not thinking anything at all.

He grabs Dermal Regenerator 1.0 from Kendall’s bedroom, sits at the kitchen table and runs the wand over his burns, carefully paying attention to only what he’s doing. Kendall cleared all the bombs off the table, but there are enough of her other inventions scattered around it would be all too easy to get distracted.

But he’s not getting distracted. He’s not thinking about anything at all, nothing that could take his mind off the task at hand. He’s not…he can’t… Not yet. Not just yet.

Then he goes into his bedroom, and Injustice’s costume is still lying on the bed where he’d dumped it yesterday, too upset about the award ceremony and the bomb to even fold it up and put it away. It’s just there, plain as day, and all the things Wes so valiantly hasn’t been thinking about come rushing in.

He picks up the costume in trembling hands, runs his fingers over the mask. A blindfold across the eyes, because justice is blind, but god, he’d been so blind all along.

How could he not have _seen_ it?!

Slowly, Wes sinks to the floor, leaning against the end of the bed with his costume puddled in his lap.

He sits there, and he shakes, and the tears come falling down.

\---

He should have known it was too good to be true. Should have known there’d be some catch, like the guy he’d fallen for also being his nemesis. Should have known he wasn’t allowed to be _happy_.

People like him don’t get happy endings.

\---

The first day, Wes doesn’t get out of bed. He lays there with the covers pulled up to his chin and the lights off, staring at the wall or the ceiling or the backs of his eyelids. He tries not to think about anything too deeply; when he does he just ends up crying again, and that’s getting annoying.

Halfway through the morning, work calls. He ignores it. The second time they call, Kendall answers and makes up some bullshit lie about him being sick (“Very sudden, very nasty, vomit everywhere, it’s really gross, you do _not_ want him coming in today”) and he makes a mental note to thank her later.

Travis doesn’t call at all.

\---

The second day, Wes drags himself out of bed long enough to take a shower and eat. He isn’t hungry in the slightest, but he knows better, so he ends up mechanically eating a bowl of cereal while Kendall watches him from the kitchen table.

“Are you okay?” she asks. Wes gives her a look, and she makes a face. “Sorry, stupid question. Do you want to talk about it? Can I help?”

Wes puts his half-full bowl in the sink and gives her a tired, empty smile. “Go to class, Ken. Don’t worry about me.”

He can hear her muttering to herself as he crawls back into bed, and no matter how long he listens, he doesn’t hear the front door open.

\---

The third day, Travis calls. Wes can’t say he’s surprised, because if the situation was reversed he’d probably do the same thing. But it frustrates him, because how the hell is he supposed to avoid thinking about Travis if Travis won’t leave him alone?

He ignores the call. And the one after that.

The third time the phone rings, Wes picks his phone up from the nightstand and throws it against the wall. The battery pops out, and the phone goes blessedly silent.

The fourth time, Travis calls Kendall. Kendall, who doesn’t know she’s not supposed to be answering, picks up. A minute later, there’s a tentative knock on his bedroom door, and she pokes her head in.

“It’s Travis,” she whispers, “What am I—”

“Travis is Golden Boy,” Wes says dully, and yup, there are the prickling tears once more. Fuck. He buries his face in his pillow, because dammit all, he doesn’t want Kendall to see him cry, and curses everything because _it’s not fair_ , he thought… he was…

_Goddammit._

Kendall quietly leaves, and even through the closed door Wes can hear her politely but firmly telling Travis to fuck off (not in so many words) and he loves her a little bit more.

A few minutes later, she comes back, and Wes is expecting platitudes or sympathy, but all she says is, “Tell me what to do,” and then leaves him to it. This time, when the tears come, they have nothing to do with Travis.

\---

The fourth day, Wes gets angry.

\---

So _what_ if Travis is Golden Boy? It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t _change_ anything. He still has his mission—to change the system. That hasn’t changed. And Travis, well, Travis was just a distraction, pulling Wes in two directions and making him lose sight of his goal. So it’s _better_ this way, really, because now he doesn’t have to think about Travis ever again except as an obstacle.

Travis _doesn’t matter_. All that matters is the end goal.

He climbs out of bed and for the first time in days he turns on the lights. He showers, brushes his teeth, and when he sees his reflection in the mirror he scowls and gets more upset at his weakness.

Anger is good. Anger motivates him. It’s what made him put on the costume, that first time, what pushed him to try and fix a broken system that let so many people down, that instigated a horrible tragedy that should have never happened. Anger burns the dark spots inside him until he’s alight with fury, with _purpose_ , and it’s so much better than the soul-crushing depression.

Anger is good. He clings to it, stokes it bright inside his chest until it blazes out of his eyes. Good. He can use this.

In his room, he pulls his Injustice costume from the closet and lays it out on the bed. This is a symbol, he thinks, a symbol of everything that’s wrong with the system, for every person that’s been hurt or injured or—or _died_ from something that should have protected them. It’s a sign of everything that’s wrong with this city, everything that needs to change.

He can do that. He _has_ to do that. There’s no one else.

The anger flares higher, and Wes lets it burn.

“Kendall!” he calls as he emerges, and Kendall, who hasn’t gone far since he holed up in his room, pops her head over the back of the couch.

“You’re feeling better?” she asks, gaze raking over him.

He ignores the question. _Better_ is a term he’s not prepared to deal with right now.

He stops in front of the couch and puts his hands on his hips. “Kendall,” he asks solemnly, “How long would it take you to build me a giant robot?”

She lights up like Christmas has just come early.

The anger flares inside him, and he lets it consume him.

\---

On Saturday, Wes accompanies Kendall to the junkyard.

(“Are you sure?” Kendall had asked, backpack slung over her shoulder. “It’s not going to be very exciting. For you, I mean. I’m just going to be looking for parts and making plans.”

“I want to see you work,” he’d told her, “I’ve never watched this part of the process. I want to see where the magic comes from.”

“It all comes from up here,” she’d chirped, tapping her temple, then shrugged. “I mean, sure, if you’d like. I don’t care either way.”)

The junkyard is massive, half a block of scrap metal and discarded appliances sitting under the viaduct. Despite it being only two miles from the apartment, Wes has never been here before. Kendall, however, is a regular, and skips through the front gate with a cheery wave to the grizzled old man out front.

There’s no one in the junkyard. It’s a little eerie, actually, being surrounded by these hulking piles of metal without another soul in sight. Wes doesn’t know how Kendall can be so comfortable here. Maybe for her it’s more about the quest for parts and the excitement of creation, while he’s just here to be distracted.

Somewhere in the middle of the yard, Kendall pulls a notepad and pen from her bag. “Okay. Let’s get started.”

The first two and a half hours, Kendall simply walks around the junkyard, making page after page of notes. Wes trails after her, amused despite himself; he usually just reaps the benefits of her inventions. He’s never seen how they come about. Kendall is completely absorbed in her work, seeing incredible innovations in pieces of junk people have thrown away.

(If she hadn’t allied herself with him, where would she be now? What could she have created if she wasn’t building ray guns and _bombs_ —

Kendall’s choice was _her own_ , he reminds himself fiercely. _She_ offered to help _him_ , not the other way around. It’s not his fault.

Say it enough and maybe someday he’ll even believe it.)

Eventually, she sits on a discarded bumper, pulls a sketchpad from her bag, and starts doodling, flipping through her notes and muttering to herself. Wes leans gingerly against a relatively clean car frame and watches her. She’s so intent on her work, she might as well be the only person in the world. Wes doubts she even remembers he’s here. 

He glances at his watch. 3:18. If he hurries, he can rush home, get his laundry, and make it to the Laundromat on time. His routines are very important to him, and this is one of his end-of-the-week rituals he’s rather keen on.

But he can’t chance seeing Travis, can’t even risk it. Not now, not yet, knowing what he knows. 

Wes watches a crow fly past the junkyard, and for the first time in almost two years, he misses Laundry Day.

That’s one more thing he’s happy to blame Travis for.

\---

“How do you come up with all of your ideas?” he’d asked her once. This was before she’d moved in, but after she’d started spending a good chunk of her time at his place, lounging on his couch as she’d designed her inventions and eating all his food.

“I dunno,” she’d shrugged, barely looking up from her tablet. “I just think them up. I’m good with machines and gadgets. Been tinkering since I was a kid.”

“Really?”

“Yup. My first invention was a coffeemaker that walked. I wanted to give my parents their coffee in bed. Freaked them the hell out that first morning, let me tell you.” She frowned, tapping her lips. “I think I was four? Five? I built my first computer before I was in middle school.”

“Huh.” He picked up one of her devices, a stun gun she’d partly disassembled because it wasn’t firing right. “Why are you doing this, though? Why not invent something and live off the patent forever?”

She shrugged again, tucking an errant curl behind her ear. “Maybe I just watched too many superhero movies as a kid, I don’t know. Besides, this is way more fun. Villains get all the cool toys.”

“Anti-hero,” Wes corrected pointedly, because back then it still stung when she called him a villain. He hadn’t yet gotten to the point where he could brush it off when he heard her say that. He spun the stun gun in his hands. “Why not become a superhero yourself?”

She scoffed. “I don’t have superpowers, Wes.”

Wes doubted that. Maybe she was just a technical genius, but her ability with gadgets and inventions seemed like more of a superpower than his slightly-better-than-average physicality.

He didn’t argue it though. “You could make yourself into a superhero,” he’d offered, pretending to aim the stun gun at a lamp. “Invent the tools to fight crime. Basically, what you do for me, except for yourself.”

Kendall had laughed, then, a full-on belly laugh, so hard she put her tablet down. “ _Me?_ A _superhero?_ Oh, no way, I’m R &D, I’m tech support. I am _not_ the person to go out there and save the world.”

“You could if you wanted.”

“But I _don’t_ want to.” Wiping tears of mirth from her eyes, she’d smiled at him. “I just want to invent stuff. They need people out there fighting crime, that’s what you’re for.” She retrieved her tablet once more, waving a hand. “Now stop distracting me, I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong with that gun you’re holding.”

Wes looked down at the gun in his hands, frowning thoughtfully, and he went, “Hmm.”

\---

It takes three more trips to the junkyard before Kendall plunks her sketchpad on the kitchen table and says, “I got it.”

It’s perfect. Exactly what he envisioned when he asked for it, a massive behemoth four stories tall, with three legs and two arms ending in giant claws, controlled by a driver seated in the central portion. 

“This is awesome,” he says, flipping through the pages, studying all the design features she’d thrown in. Lasers, defense, even a limited force shield over the central space for the driver. “You can make all this with what you found at the junkyard?”

“Pretty much.” She comes up beside him, watching him go through the plans. “A couple of things I’ll have to find elsewhere, but for the most part, yeah.”

“Amazing.” He stacked the pages, squared the corners. “How long will it take?”

“A while.” She bites her lip, rubs the back of her neck. “I mean, with school…if I work on it nonstop in my free time, _maybe_ two months. Probably more like three.”

And she says that isn’t a superpower.

“What if I helped?”

Kendall pauses, blinking. “Helped? You—no offense, but you wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“So show me. Give me blueprints, something to follow. I can work on it during the day, while you’re at school.”

“While I’m—What about your job?”

“I’ll take a leave of absence. I could do with a break anyway.”

She’s openly staring at him, mouth hanging open a little. “Wes,” she says slowly, “Are you okay?”

No. He’s angry and hurt and he just wants everything to _stop_. He’s tired of fighting the same battles again and again with nothing to show for it. He wants—

He turns back to the plans, running his fingers over the top page. “This is more important,” he says softly.

She’s silent a long time, long enough he thinks she’s gearing up for a drawn-out conversation where she’ll try to make him _talk_ about his _feelings_.

But all she says is, “If you’re helping, we can get it done in four, maybe five weeks.”

A month. He can wait that long.

“Perfect. Let’s make it happen.”

\---

Wes throws himself into the robot. Every morning before she goes to class, Kendall gives him a stack of easy-to-read blueprints, telling him exactly what do to while she’s away. He goes to the junkyard, nods at the man at the front, and gathers what he needs.

There are a lot of empty warehouses in this part of town. They set up shop in one of them, far enough from the main streets that it won’t draw too much attention, and Wes gets to work. 

Several times during the first week, his job calls, Laura making polite inquiries into his health, Jeff asking more bluntly when he’ll be returning. After the fifth call, Wes unplugs the phone and stops answering.

It doesn’t matter. This is more important.

Kendall comes by right after class, backpack full of spare parts and pieces of metal. One of the nice things about this sort of project is that once Kendall gets going, she’s in the zone, and nothing will distract her from it. So Wes only has to put up with a few worried looks before he gives Kendall the rundown of what he accomplished that day and she’s totally absorbed with the task at hand. Once she’s working on her giant robot, Wes doesn’t have to deal with questions about how he’s doing or if he’s feeling okay or maybe he should take a break, get out of here and think about something else for a while.

Wes doesn’t want to think about anything else. He’d rather like to just stop thinking about anything altogether, but since that isn’t a viable solution, focusing on building a giant robot is a good alternative.

By the end of the first week, Kendall sits back, wipes her forehead (leaving a smudge of grease behind) and says, “This is good. We’re making better progress than I thought.”

“So you think we’ll have it done in a month?”

She nods. “We should, yeah.”

He looks at the partly-finished construction before him, and something inside him dances with anticipation.

\---

Every night, he pulls out Injustice’s costume and runs his fingers over it. Grounding him, reminding him what he’s fighting for. Reminding him of everything he’s trying to change.

It helps assuage the doubts, helps quiet the little voice in the back of his mind going, _Is this really a good idea?_

There’s nothing wrong with this plan. He’s sure of it.

\---

On Saturday they work late, long after the sun has gone down and the streetlights have come on. Wes isn’t worried walking home—after all this time as Injustice, he can take care of himself, and Kendall probably has an entire arsenal in her bag. 

Still, as they’re approaching their apartment building, a shadow detaches from the doorway, and Wes automatically steps in front of Kendall.

Then Travis steps into the light, and Wes wishes he could hide behind _her_.

He stops walking, tense as a bowstring, hands fisted at his side. Prepared for anything. But Travis doesn’t look like he’s come for a fight. He’s in jeans and his leather jacket, and the lines around his mouth and eyes are worried, not angry.

(Wes wonders what it says, that he can read Travis’s face so well. He tries not to think about it too much.)

“Wes?” Kendall murmurs behind him. “Do you need me to…?” She fiddles with the clasp of her bag, a clear invitation.

He makes a small, sharp cutting motion behind his back, at an angle Travis can’t see. Travis isn’t here for a fight—if he was, he’d be in costume, and League agents would be swarming their apartment.

Travis doesn’t know. He still doesn’t know.

Wes isn’t sure if that’s better or worse. If Travis isn’t here because he knows, then he’s here because it’s _personal_.

“Kendall, go inside,” he orders, and he’s proud of how steady his voice sounds to his ears. Just the sight of the other man is enough to make his feel stretched taut, like he’s about to snap in half any second now.

The redhead hesitates, clutching the strap of her bag and watching Travis warily. “Are you sure? I can—”

“It’s fine. _Travis_ and I are just going to _talk_. Isn’t that right?”

The hero shifts, shoves his hands in his pockets. “Just talk,” he agrees, though he doesn’t look happy about it.

Kendall’s not happy either. She edges around Travis with a frown on her face, miming to Wes behind the hero’s back. _I’ll be right inside, yell if you need me_. Wes appreciates the support, though he’s not sure what good it will do. This is Wes and Travis, not Injustice and Golden Boy.

She’s amazing at what she does, the best sidekick in the world, but this is something different.

He waits until she’s inside the lobby and the door has swung shut behind her before he crosses his arms and demands, “What are you doing here?”

Travis fidgets, oddly hesitant. “You missed Laundry Day,” he says, as though that explains everything. “Last week too.”

“I didn’t miss it,” Wes informs him coldly, “I just didn’t go. Why are you _here?_ I never told you where I lived.” He couldn’t risk it, couldn’t chance Travis getting curious and finding something incriminating.

Travis ducks his head, flushing. “I, uh, I looked you up.”

That makes Wes go cold. Looked him up. Looked _what_ up? How much does Travis know?

“Looked me up?” he snaps venomously. “What, the League has a file on me?”

“Jesus, Wes!” Travis’s eyes dart back and forth, even though there is literally no one else on the streets. “Keep your voice down!”

“Oh, is _that_ what this is?” Wes rolls his eyes. “You want to check up on me, make sure I don’t accidentally slip that you’re Golde—”

The rest of the words are lost in a burst of breath as Travis lunges forward, claps a hand over Wes’s mouth, and slams him into the wall. Wes’s heart rate spikes, and he feels, in short order, 1) fear, 2) affection, and 3) anger, because 1) he still remembers the punctured lung incident vividly, 2) even when shutting Wes up to protect his secret identity, Travis didn’t use his super strength and he cushioned the blow so Wes doesn’t even think he’ll have any bruises tomorrow, and 3) how _dare_ he just fucking _grab_ Wes like that and _slam him into a wall?_

Wes promptly ignores number 2 and focuses on 1 and 3.

He pushes ineffectually at Travis’s chest, glaring at the other man and spitting invectives into Travis’s palm. Travis grimaces, muttering, “Sorry, babe, I’m sorry, but you can’t just go blurting that out. _Please_ don’t.”

Wes reluctantly settles, still glaring fiercely, and Travis bites his lip. “If I take my hand away, will you start shouting?”

Wes mutters something unflattering and rude.

Travis sighs. “Fine.” Slowly, ready to leap back in at the slightest hint of yelling or secret-identity-revealing, Travis pulls back.

Wes leans against the wall, running his hands down his shirt. “You goddamn _bastard_ ,” he hisses, and Travis at least has the grace to look abashed.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, but it’s not enough, it will _never_ be enough.

“You _lied_ to me!” Wes snaps, just below a shout. “You lied the _entire time!”_

“To protect you!” Travis shoots back. “To keep you safe!”

“And look where that got us!”

They glare at each other, but Travis is the one who looks away first.

Wes pushes off the wall, taking care not to so much as brush Travis. “Leave me alone, Travis,” he says flatly. “Stay the hell away from me.”

“Wes,” Travis says brokenly, but Wes doesn’t look back.

\---

Kendall is hovering just inside the lobby, biting her lip and tugging at her hair. She has one of her little bombs in her hand—a smoke bomb, he thinks, and he approves of her quick thinking while simultaneously being annoyed that was her first thought.

“Put that away,” he tells her as he walks past, not unkindly. “We’re fine.”

She scrambles to keep up, shoving the smoke bomb in her bag. “Are you sure? ‘Cause you really don’t look fine.”

“Everything’s fine.”

“But what about…” She looks over her shoulder, out towards the street.

Wes grits his teeth and stomps up the stairs. “He’s not a problem. He doesn’t know. Is there any way we can move up the completion date on our project?”

Kendall gives him a long, assessing look, then says, “I’ll see what I can do.”

\---

Travis is not a problem. Travis is a motivator. The mere sight of him enflames his anger, stokes the fires into an almost overwhelming blaze.

In less than a month, the robot will be done, and then—

Well. That’s not quite relevant right now, is it?

One way or another, this is all going to end.

\---

Seeing Travis only galvanizes him. He works longer days, starts earlier in the morning and stays later at night. He stops for cat naps and food breaks, and not very many at that. He knows Kendall is concerned, can tell from the worried glances she keeps sending him and the pointed questions about how much sleep he’s getting and maybe they should take a day off, relax, let things settle before jumping onto the next part of the project.

Wes tells her no. This is too important to take a break on.

“ _Why?”_ she demands. “Why is it so important? How is this different than any other harebrained scheme we’ve come up with?”

He simply turns back to the piece in his hand and says, “Can you pass me the soldering iron?”

She probably thinks he’s sore about the whole Travis thing, that he’s throwing himself into this robot as a way of distracting himself. She’s not wrong. She’s not entirely right, either. 

Another Laundry Day comes and goes. His routines are there for a reason—they keep him grounded, something familiar and constant to cling to. Without them, he can feel himself spiraling.

He can’t bring himself to care.

\---

And finally, it’s done. Three weeks and four days after they start the project, Kendall welds the last piece in place and the robot is complete.

It doesn’t look like much, from here. The central portion is only the size of a small truck, and all folded up, the limbs hardly look like enough to carry the weight. But Kendall is a genius, and Wes knows it’ll work; when the robot is fired up, those spindly legs will carry him five stories above the ground, towering over the people in the street.

They stand in front of it, silent, and Wes has the odd thought that this must be what new parents feel like, the awe of creating something so beautiful, yet so terrifying. Beside him, Kendall rubs her cheek. She’s got grease and soot smeared on her face, and her hair is falling out of her bun, but she doesn’t notice. “What are you going to do with it?” she asks, turning to him with bright eyes.

The best way to distract her is to give her something to invent.

“You always say a proper villain needs giant robots and ray guns.” He casually puts his hands in his pockets and gives her a challenging eyebrow. “How quickly can you make me a ray gun?”

A grin crosses her face, her eyes already distant with calculations. “I need to go find a microwave.” She grabs her bag and rush off before he can say anything (not that he would), muttering to herself as she goes.

Wes listens to her echoes fade, then looks at the robot once more.

\---

This is it.

One way or another, this all ends.

\---

It’s simple work for Kendall to hack into the police commissioner’s schedule. “What are you going to do?” she asks, sounding a little annoyed he won’t tell her his plan. From the start she’s been an integral part of the planning process, even sometimes offering suggestions of plots, because she watched a lot more cartoons as a kid, so she has a lot more nefarious ideas in her mind than Wes does.

He refuses to tell her his plan this time, and it frustrates her. But he’s not going to risk it.

He almost wants to pick a Saturday, somewhere between 3:30 and 4:00 in the afternoon, just for synchronicity. But eventually he settles on the middle of the week, at a time when he knows Kendall will be in her classes, far from the action.

“I don’t have to go to class, though,” she offers, “I could help—”

“No,” he snaps, “I want you as far from this as possible. If something happens…”

She pauses here, frowning, and asks carefully, “Wes, what do you think is going to happen?”

“Nothing,” he answers automatically. “But there’s always a chance. You’re just tech support, remember? You don’t get involved with this part of it.”

She’s still not happy, it’s written all over her face, but she settles, stops asking so many questions. Good enough.

\---

And then… It’s time. The chosen day.

Kendall goes to school, with unsubtle looks aimed his direction and a very pointed, “Call me if _anything_ happens, anything at _all_ ,” as she leaves. As soon as the door shuts behind her, Wes folds his costume in his briefcase, latches the lid, and goes to the warehouse. 

The suit feels tight on his skin, almost claustrophobic. He tells himself it’s because he hasn’t worn it in so long, that all he needs is some time to get used to it again. (That doesn’t explain the cloying, tight feeling in his chest, his lungs, making it hard to get a full breath of air. He ignores that.)

(He’s good at ignoring things he doesn’t want to think about.)

For a long, long minute, he holds the mask in his hands, staring down at the blue and silver cloth. He’d wanted to be a symbol, wanted to elicit change.

Now, oh, now he’s just _tired_. He just wants to stop this stupid fight.

Today is the day. Everything ends today.

He slides the mask on, and Wesley Mitchell disappears.

Injustice heads to the robot.

\---

When he was a child, there was a commercial that would air, one of those public safety deals urging kids to stop littering and be kind to people, that sort of thing. At the end, Brightman, one of the biggest heroes at that time, would point at the camera and say to all the people watching, “Anyone can be a hero, even you. All it takes is doing the right thing.”

It’s a lie. After all this time, Wes has learned that doing the right thing never saved anybody.

There are no such things as heroes.

\---

The last time Injustice disappeared for a time, Golden Boy brought two more heroes along to counter whatever he’d planned. Now it’s been over a month; idly, he wonders if the hero has the other supers on the lookout for whatever bigger and greater threat Injustice has prepared.

It doesn’t really matter, he decides. This is between Injustice and Golden Boy. Everyone else will just get in the way.

The robot’s controls are simple, intuitive, made for someone who _isn’t_ a computer wizard. He flips a few switches and cranks a few dials and the machine is humming to life around him, lights flickering and dials spinning, and it really is amazing, that Kendall can just come up with this sort of thing off the top of her head.

(For a half a second, he wishes Kendall _were_ here, so she could see her creation come to life. Then he shakes his head and reminds himself that she’s so much safer where she is, far, far away from all of this.)

Another flick-twist of a switch, an inputted code, and the robot’s legs extend, up and up and—oops, it crashes right through the roof. That’s going to get attention. Then again, a _giant robot_ isn’t exactly made for subtlety. 

Injustice manipulates the controls, turns the robot towards City Hall, and starts walking.

\---

By the time he makes it to City Hall, the area has been evacuated and a police cordon has been set up. The robot easily steps over the cordon, and he can hear the tiny _ping! ping!_ of bullets hitting the outside of the machine, but Kendall knows what she’s doing. Nothing penetrates the thin force shield she set up.

According to the schedule Kendall hacked, the police commissioner is, at this time, in a meeting with the mayor. Unfortunately, the building has been evacuated. Giant robot, remember?

Before Wes can curse too much, he spots a stroke of good fortune: the commissioner stayed behind to coordinate the police cordon.

Looks like things are still going according to plan.

With a quick twist of the controls, the robot’s arms swoop down and scoop up the commissioner in a pair of jointed, metal claws. The man lets out a surprised holler as he’s swung up, up, up into the air, dangling precariously above the ground. His arms are pinioned at his sides; he kicks his feet and struggles against the robot’s grip, but he’s not going anywhere. There’s nowhere for him to go.

Injustice flips a few more switches, then climbs out of the hatch. He’s wearing Kendall’s personal force shield, just in case, but the men below aren’t shooting anymore. Not with their police commissioner suspended midair.

Heedless of the distance between him and the ground, Injustice stalks down the length of one of the robot’s arm, looming over the captive commissioner.

The commissioner glares up at him, red-faced and puffing. “What are you doing?” he grunts, wriggling in the metal claws like there’s an escape here.

It occurs to Wes that he doesn’t even know the man’s name. After all this time, that’s not something he ever bothered to learn.

It doesn’t matter now, he supposes.

“Something I should have done a long time ago.”

And he pulls out the ray gun and aims it at the commissioner’s forehead.

At first, there’s merely scorn. “What’s that? A freeze gun? A stun gun?”

Injustice points the gun at the roof of City Hall and pulls the trigger. A chunk of the roof vanishes in a sizzle of smoke and melted slag.

He brings the gun back around and takes aim.

The man’s eyes widen comically, and he jerks back and away, though the claws only give him a few inches. “Are you insane? Stop!”

Injustice chuckles, a cold and empty sound. “If you call a man a villain enough times, are you really surprised when he decides to meet those expectations?” He takes a steady breath. “I’m going to fix what’s broken. Starting with you.”

He tightens his finger—

A shrill whine cuts through the air, like the engine of a jet. In the distance appears a tiny shape, zooming through the air, a figure—no, two figures, a blur of navy and gold and white, roaring past buildings so fast the windows rattle. Injustice watches the approach, thumb sweeping across the butt of the ray gun, his aim never wavering.

Jetstrike rockets past the robot at speeds no human could ever hope to match, and there’s a heavy thud of impact as she deposits her passenger.

Injustice doesn’t turn around. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

Golden Boy exhales sharply. “What are you doing, man?”

“What I should have done a long time ago.”

“Yeah?” There’s a creak of metal behind him. Injustice turns just enough to see Golden Boy from the corner of his eye, enough to watch the hero take another small step forward. “What’s that, then?”

“Keep moving if you want me to shoot him.”

Golden Boy stops.

“What’re you _doing_ , man?” The hero holds out his hands, beseeching. “This isn’t gonna help anything.”

“Cut off the head of the snake, and the body dies,” Injustice intones.

“Yeah, that’s great, ‘cept what you’re fighting isn’t a snake!” The hero inches forward another step. “This won’t fix _anything_.”

“Stop. Moving.”

He doesn’t stop. “Listen to me—”

Injustice pulls the trigger. There’s a flash of red light, and the police commissioner goes limp.

“Stop moving,” Injustice says again.

\---

In his short career as an anti-hero-slash-supervillain, Injustice has frozen people solid, and turned them into animals, stunned them and swapped their minds and (non-fatally) poisoned them.

He has never killed anyone.

Golden Boy exhales shakily, his words a horrified whisper. “Did…did you…”

He hasn’t started today.

“He’s just stunned.” He runs his thumb over the butt of the gun, adjusting the power of the ray gun with a touch. “The next step you take makes his head explode.”

Golden Boy doesn’t say anything. Injustice watches from the corner of his eye as myriad emotions cross the hero’s face. If Travis didn’t have the mask on, Wes could probably read every single one.

“You didn’t kill him,” the hero says slowly, ponderingly.

Injustice jabs the gun threateningly. “I will, I swear to god.”

“Hey, hey,” the hero soothes, hands held out in front of him. “I totally believe you, okay, but maybe we can just stick a pin in that. At least until you tell me why you’re doing this.”

Not ‘what are you doing?’ but ‘ _why?’_ and under the suit Wes aches, deep inside all in the places that time hasn’t healed.

“I am _tired_ ,” he snarls, “of fighting the same damn fights and _nothing changes_. I’m putting an _end_ to this!”

One way or another, everything ends today.

“Don’t _do_ this!” Golden Boy practically begs.

He hefts the gun and grits his teeth. “They want a villain, that’s what they’re going to _get_.”

Before he can pull the trigger, the hero at his back says two words:

“Anthony Padua.”

Wes goes cold down to his core. 

\---

“Can I ask you a personal question?” Travis once asked over dinner.

Wes chewed thoughtfully, studying the other man. They’d been dating a few months now, long enough they could ask personal questions and get semi-serious answers. It was how Wes learned about Travis’s history in foster care, and it helped Travis understand Wes’s need for his routines.

(“They keep me grounded,” he’d explained to Travis’s knees, “Help keep me from getting lost in my head, or—or stuck in a rut. It’s good to…” And he’d trailed off, unable to explain any further, and Travis had wrapped his hand around Wes’s neck and pulled him close.)

“Sure,” he said slowly, “but I can’t guarantee I’ll answer.”

“Fair enough.” Travis looked down, poking his food. “Why do you hate cops so much?”

“Ah.” Wes slowly set his fork down. “That _is_ a personal question.”

Travis didn’t say anything, just watched him with eyes that promised understanding and compassion.

Wes swallowed, hands twisting in front of him. “For the record, I don’t hate you.”

“Which I appreciate,” Travis responded wryly.

Wes gave him a flash of a smile that was gone as quick as it came. He looked down at his hands. “The system is broken,” he said slowly. “It doesn’t protect innocents the way it should, and people die.” He swallowed. “The police are just one manifestation of that. I also hate lawyers, judges, lawmakers.”

“I see.” Travis twirled his fork, studying Wes. “So why stay a lawyer, then? Why not get out and become, I don’t know, a baker?”

Wes gave him a flat Are you an idiot? look. “I can’t change anything from outside the system, Travis.”

“Right, sorry, stupid question.”

They were silent for a few minutes. Wes waited; he could see Travis gearing himself up to ask something else, something bigger. Sure enough, not a moment later…

“What happened?”

Pain ripped through him, old and familiar, and Wes smiled an empty smile. “I’m not going to answer that one, Travis.”

\---

“Anthony Padua.”

Wes freezes, head whipping around to stare at the hero. “You—how did you…?”

“I figured it out, Wes.” Golden Boy—no, _Travis_ , those are Travis’s eyes behind that mask—Travis makes a face, kind of like a grimace but more like a teary smile. “The system is broken, you said. It’s broken and people die.” He takes a cautious step forward. “Injustice said that too.”

“Stop! Right there!”

Travis doesn’t stop. “I looked you up a while ago, learned about Anthony. But I didn’t get it, not really. Not until I connected the dots.” Another slow step forward. “He’s why you’re doing this, isn’t he? Because the system failed, and a kid you were supposed to protect died.”

“Stop. _Moving!”_ Wes swings around.

Travis barely blinks at the ray gun aimed at his chest. “You can’t hurt me, Wes.”

Wes aims the gun to the robot arm beneath the hero’s feet. “I don’t have to hurt you to make you go away.” 

This time, Travis doesn’t move. “And then what? You kill the police commissioner? You don’t want to do that.”

“You don’t _know_ what I want!” His voice breaks in the middle. Wes is too angry(upset) to be embarrassed.

“I know you don’t want to hurt anyone, or you would have started a long time ago.” Travis inches closer; he keeps his words level, his voice calm. “You want to change things, fix a broken system. Do you really think this will change _anything?”_

“It’s a damn good start!” With a snarl, Wes whips back around, the ray gun pointed right at the police commissioner’s forehead.

Travis tenses like he’s about to spring forward—but he doesn’t. “No it’s _not_ ,” he says, faster than before, more frantic. Or maybe just trying to say everything he can before Wes pulls the trigger. “This won’t change _squat_. You kill him, they’ll put another one just like him in his place. Are you gonna kill that guy too?”

“Yes!” Wes roars, “If I have to!”

He feels like he’s teetering on a tightrope, and it’s just a matter of time before he falls.

The question is, which way is he going to land?

Travis closes his eyes, pauses, regroups. “Wes,” he murmurs, inching forward, voice soft, coaxing. “Baby, _don’t_. You do this, you can’t come back from it. You’re not a bad guy.”

The laugh that tears out of him is more than a little hysterical. “Yes I _am_. Haven’t you listened to the news? I’m a _villain_.”

“No, god, _no_ , Wes. You’re not. You’ve only ever tried to help people.”

“I am.” His hand is shaking, he notes dimly. It’s shaking and he can’t make it stop. “I’m the worst.”

“You’re not.” Travis is close now, hovering in his peripherals, close enough to leap forward and grab him if he wanted to. He still doesn’t. “Misguided, maybe, but not bad. Not the worst.”

The tears are back, hot and sharp behind his eyes. It takes everything he’s got to keep them from falling. “Stop,” he whispers, but Travis doesn’t hear.

“You’ve never hurt anyone, Wes.” Travis slides forward, another slow, easy step, erasing the distance between them. “You’ve never killed anyone. You didn’t kill Anthony.”

“Shut _up_.” Wes squeezes his eyes shut, but that doesn’t block the hero’s voice.

“Anthony killed _himself_.”

“Just _shut up!”_ He’s teetering, teetering, and Travis is going to push him right over the edge. “I have to! I don’t have a choice!”

“There’s _always_ a choice,” the hero retorts. “Don’t make this one.”

Slowly, Wes lowers the ray gun. “I’m so tired of this,” he whispers, studying the weapon through watering eyes. “I just want everything to stop.”

“We’ll figure it out.” Travis moves closer, close enough Wes can feel the heat of his body, his hands reaching for his. “I’ll promise, we’ll figure everything out. So please, baby…”

Travis’s hands wrap around him, and—that’s all the push he needs.

Wes folds in on himself, the ray gun slipping from his fingers. Travis is there in an instant, flinging the gun away, and he wraps his arms around Wes and holds him tight as he falls apart.

\---

He’s just so tired.

\---

(“Did you do it on purpose?” he gets asked much, much later. “You said you were tired. That you wanted everything to stop. What you did, going after the police commissioner… You had to know that was crossing a line. Is that why you did it? Because you knew he would stop you?”

And Wes closes his eyes and whispers, “Maybe.”

It’s a truth he hasn’t admitted even to himself.)


	4. Track Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s actually quite easy, giving everything up for someone else. Almost heroic, really.

_“The feeling is less like an ending than just another starting point.”_   
_—Chuck Palahniuk, Choke_

\---

They take him to the League Headquarters. No surprise, really. They stick him in a windowless cell and bring in two agents to question him. Agent Coppola, a sleek, sharp brunette, and Agent Paek, a smiling Korean man with a gentle smile, sit across from him in a pair of folding chairs and try to coax him to talk.

Wes sits on a stool that’s bolted to the floor and doesn’t say a word.

After a fruitless forty minutes, Agent Coppola leans back, as casual as a tiger. “We can make your life very difficult for you, Mr. Mitchell,” she says, casual, almost, except there’s just a hint of a threat in her voice. “You’re a vigilante, which means your crimes fall under the Superpowered Humans Act. We have the power here, not the courts.”

Wes twists his hands in his lap and says nothing. 

Agent Paek leans forward, face open and trusting. In another setting, Wes thinks he might almost like the man. He seems like one of those people that gets along with everybody. “Mr. Mitchell, we can help you. We _want_ to help you. But you need to help us first.”

It’s funny, really, that an organization as widespread and powerful as the League of Superheroes has to resort to such clichés as _good cop bad cop_ to get information. Wes would have thought they’d have telepaths or truth serum or something.

But no. It’s just two agents—not even superheroes, just regular, human agents in suits—sitting in a cell.

Wes stares at the wall between their heads and keeps his mouth shut.

Agent Paek sighs, sounding almost disappointed. “Mr. Mitchell, there’s nothing we can do for you if you don’t give us something.”

Wes bites his tongue and clasps his hands together so tightly his knuckles turn white.

The two agents look at each other, and something passes between them that Wes doesn’t understand. On cue, they stand, neatly folding their chairs in movements so synchronized Wes wonders if they’ve practiced it. (Probably. The League is showy like that. That’s what you get when you employ a bunch of people who run around in spandex.)

“We’ll be back,” Agent Coppola says, rather more menacingly than Wes feels the situation warrants. She strides to the door and bangs on the metal with her fist until it opens.

Agent Paek follows her, giving Wes a sympathetic smile. “If you need anything, just knock on the door,” he says, like that’s supposed to be reassuring. _You’re stuck in our prison cell but if you want anything, just knock_. Then he, too, is gone, and the door slams shut behind him.

Wes exhales and slumps on the stool, dropping his head in his hands.

\---

He supposes he always knew this day would come. One day, he would mess up, get sloppy, and the League would come and drag him away to…wherever they stick supervillains. No one’s really quite sure the location. Or maybe he would snap, go a little bit crazy, do something so big that he was no longer just an annoyance but an actual, credible _threat_ that needed to be taken care of.

He used to imagine what it would be like, in the League’s custody. Somehow, he imagined a lot more torture.

The cell is actually quite nice, as far as cells go. No windows, and just the one door, but it’s a decent size and it’s clean, which Wes appreciates. The only visible piece of furniture is the stool in the middle of the room, but upon closer inspection, Wes finds a thin bunk, opposite the door, that folds out of the wall. There’s also, in the far corner, two silver buttons that reveal a toilet and a sink, respectively. On the one hand, it makes his skin crawl to think of doing his business in the same room he has to sleep (though he really doesn’t know what he was expecting from a prison cell). On the other hand, even he thinks it’s a kind of cool innovation, and he wonders what Kendall would make of it.

Kendall. God, he hopes she’s alright. He hopes she’s smart and keeps her head down and the League doesn’t swoop down on her too. She’s got a lot more going for her than he ever did.

The walls and floor are made of the same material, an almost rubbery substance, dark grey flecked with white and black specks. Maybe it’s supposed to suppress superpowers. It would explain why the two agents didn’t bother to restrain him in any way when they tossed him in here. Not like it would make much of a difference in his case.

He picks at the wall a bit, does a few laps around the room, and searches the corners for cameras. He can’t see any, but he has no doubt they’re watching him.

After a while—he’s not sure how long, he doesn’t have a clock and the lack of windows makes it impossible to tell the time—he pulls out the bunk, braces himself for laying down on something god-knows how many other people have slept on, and lays down to wait.

\---

He must doze off, because he jerks awake when the latches on the door slam. By the time they enter the room, he’s pushing himself upright, feeling mussed and annoyed and more determined than ever to keep his mouth shut. They want him to stew, they’ll be in for a long wait.

Neither of them have chairs, he notices, right about the same time Agent Coppola says, “We’ve apprehended Kendall Zehetner.”

His head snaps up.

She nods, blank-faced but radiating triumph. “We found many, many interesting things in her room. Blueprints, prototypes…she even had a charming little stun grenade in her backpack when we picked her up. I think we can build a strong case against her.”

Wes goes cold, stomach sinking all the way through the floor. He rises to his feet, because this is not a conversation he wants to face sitting down, and swallows hard.

“Leave her alone.” His voice comes out shaky; he doesn’t even try to hide it. They have Kendall, goddammit, how many times did he worry about this exact thing? How many times did he fear he would bring her down with him? He had nothing to lose, but she has the whole world, and now she’s sitting in the exact same boat he’s in. “She had nothing to do with any of this.”

“She signed all of her blueprints,” Agent Paek says.

Of course she did.

Wes takes a step forward. “It’s not her fault. She just wanted to build things. They were my plans, my ideas. She had nothing to do with any of it.”

Wes may have tossed his own life down a deep dark hole, but he refuses to drag Kendall down with him.

The agents share a few quick looks, silent communication passing between them. Then Agent Coppola moves to the door, speaking to the agent in the hall. Agent Paek gestures for Wes to sit on the bunk once more, which Wes does. In a few minutes, the folding chairs have made a reappearance, and silence fills the room.

Agent Paek finally breaks it, saying encouragingly, “Why don’t you tell us what happened at City Hall?”

Digging his fingernails into his palms, Wes takes a breath. _For Kendall_ , he reminds himself, and that simply, he starts talking.

It’s actually quite easy, giving everything up for someone else.

Almost heroic, really.

\---

After they’ve exhausted their list of questions, they leave him alone once more. He tries to get information about Kendall from them as they go, but neither of them reveal anything, though Agent Paek gives him a small, apologetic smile as the door closes.

A little while later, they bring him food, bland and boring, a Styrofoam tray and plastic utensils. Wes wonders what they think he can possibly do with real silverware, but eats anyway.

His meal done, he uses the toilet and washes his hands about four times. He sits on the bunk and waits. 

No one comes.

He walks the perimeter of the room half a dozen times, pacing it out until he has the dimensions memorized. When he gets tired of that, he lays on the bunk and counts the specks in the ceiling until he loses track of the numbers. 

It’s impossible to tell time in here, and it’s much too easy for his mind to wander freely. When even going over his old cases, his mental list of his greatest triumphs, doesn’t banish thoughts of all they might be doing to Kendall, he climbs to his feet and pounds on the door. After a moment, a panel he didn’t notice in the center of it creaks open, and a small, beady pair of eyes peers in.

He asks after Kendall. The agent on the other side of the door says nothing and closes the little hatch.

No matter how many more times he knocks, the hatch doesn’t open again.

After a while, there’s nothing else he can do but lay down and try not to worry too much. It doesn’t work.

Eventually, he falls asleep.

\---

They come a few more times, asking questions about his past misdeeds that he answers without lying or obfuscating in any way.

Every time they come, he asks about Kendall, but they don’t tell him anything.

\---

When they apprehended him, they took his suit and gadgets and gave him…prison garments, really. Undergarments and a soft grey uniform and white slip-on shoes with no laces. Seriously, what do they think he’s going to do in here? He _surrendered_.

After waking and eating the meager meal laid out for him, Wes spends approximately five minutes sitting, waiting for something to happen, before he gives up. He toes off the white shoes and lines them up under the bunk, neatly folds the grey shirt on the bed, and starts doing his yoga routine in the grey pants and white undershirt. 

He’s in a Bird of Paradise pose when the door clicks open and a woman walks in. Not Agent Coppola; this woman is a little shorter, with dark hair and a bronzer complexion. She pauses when she sees him, blinking a few times, and then she smiles.

“Please don’t stop on my account,” she says with a British accent. She takes a seat on the stool, folding her hands neatly on her lap and crossing her legs at the ankle. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

Wes finishes counting off the pose in his head, then lowers his leg. He’s not quite done with his routine, but it’s one thing to do yoga in front of cameras that may or may not be there, and quite another thing to do it in front of a stranger. Not even his love for his routines can convince him to keep going.

He slides his shirt back on, slips into his shoes, washes his hands a couple of times just because it settles his nerves, then sits on the bunk, waiting. The woman merely smiles.

“Hello, Mr. Mitchell. My name is Dr. Emma Ryan.”

His brow creases a fraction. “I’m not sick. Or injured.” Surely they know that. It’s not like he put up a fight when they took him in or anything.

“No, not that kind of doctor. I’m a psychologist.”

“ _Oh_.” A whole wealth of meaning in that one sound, and he has no doubt she hears it all.

Her smile never changes. “I am here to assess your mental state and decide if you are a threat, to yourself, other people, or the community as a whole.”

“And then you get to decide what to do with me?”

She tilts her head in acknowledgement. “My report will be taken into consideration, yes, among other things.”

Wes waits, but she doesn’t elaborate what those other things might be.

He leans against the wall, crossing his legs in front of him. “What do you want to know?” Flippant, but he’s pretty sure she can see just how defensive he is right now, because she exhales softly and leans forward a little.

“Mr. Mitchell, I don’t want to be your enemy. I want to help you. Your…sidekick? Kendall, she says you’re not a bad person, and I want to believe her. But I can’t do anything to help you if you keep resisting like this.”

The mention of Kendall makes him pause, bite back his initial sarcastic remark. “How is she?” he asks instead, voice smaller than he really intends. “She’s…is she okay?”

“Yes.” The answer is so instantaneous Wes almost can’t believe she’s lying. _Almost_. “She’s fine. Annoyed, but unharmed.”

Yeah, that sounds like Kendall. “Good.” Something in him relaxes, and he feels a little calmer. If they’d hurt her… But they haven’t so it’s alright. “That’s good.” He hesitates, takes a breath, and asks, “Can I…see her?”

Dr. Ryan studies him, eyes scanning his face and meeting his gaze unflinchingly. “I’ll see what I can do,” she finally says, but before he can get too excited, she adds, “It would really help if you were a bit more forthcoming.”

He supposes he shouldn’t have expected any less.

He debates the options before him, but there’s really nothing he can do and he knows it. Being stubborn won’t help him here. It’ll only just prolong everything. “What do you want to know?”

“How did all of this start? The vigilantism, Injustice, everything.”

Pain rips through him, an old, familiar ache that’s dulled to a quiet roar in his chest. He closes his eyes, fists clenched in his lap, and tilts his head against the wall.

The words, when they come, have to be forced around the lump in his throat. Even after all this time, it hurts beyond belief. 

“There was this kid. Anthony Padua. I was his lawyer…”

\---

After…god, he doesn’t even know how long it’s been, and he understands now why solitary confinement is such a potent punishment. He could have been in here for hours or _days_ and he would have no idea, and honestly he’s so ready to talk to someone he’d spill anything they wanted to the first person that walked through the door. He’s taken to counting the passing time by meals and naps, because otherwise every minute blends into the next.

Anyway, two meals and one nap after his little talk with Dr. Ryan, the door is pushed open. Wes is lying on his bunk, and he’s more than a little tired of all the League dramatics, so he doesn’t bother to get up, just turns his head to see who his new visitor is.

The person in the doorway makes him sit upright so fast his head spins. “Kendall?”

She sees him, and her face just lights up with relief. “Wes!” She races across the room, throws her arms around his neck, and by this time he’s risen to his feet and can hug her back. “Oh my god, Wes! It’s so good to see you!” 

He gives her a little squeeze, and a knot in his chest relaxes. Dr. Ryan had said Kendall was fine, but it’s one thing hearing the words and another to actually see it, especially since a part of him didn’t really believe her anyway.

But here she is, whole and healthy and still hugging him.

“Why are you here?”

“I don’t know.” She pulls away, holds him at arm’s length and looks him up and down. “Dr. Ryan, I guess she pulled some strings or something? She seems really nice.” Before he can comment on Dr. Ryan’s personality, Kendall rears back and smacks the side of his head. “I can’t believe you did that!”

“Ow!” He flinches out of her grasp, rubbing the side of his head. “What the hell?”

“You scared me, Wes!” Her voice cracks, and her eyes go shiny and bright. “You really scared me!”

And now that he’s looking, he can see that the past however-long hasn’t been kind on her. Oh, she’s not injured, no wounds or even a bruise that he can see. But her eyes are puffy, and there are bags under her eyes, dark smudges that highlight her pale, drawn features, and now that they’re a little distant he can see how she’s sort of shaking all over.

Wes, who has historically been very bad at comforting people in situations like this, flounders. “You’re the one who gave me the ray gun and the robot.”

“To scare him!” She reaches out and hits him again before he can dance away. “I didn’t know you were going to go all whackadoodle and try to _kill_ someone!”

His retort dies on his tongue. “Whackadoodle?”

She nods vigorously. “Absolutely, completely whackadoodle.”

There’s a moment, a heartbeat of silence, and the tension dissipates. They both start laughing, and maybe it’s a little hysterical and fueled by nerves, but neither of them are crying, so things are actually looking on the bright side.

When they both run out of giggles, they sit on the bunk, side by side. Kendall slumps against him, and he wraps his arm around her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he tells her, and it’s probably the first time he’s bothered to say those words. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

She sighs against his shoulder. “I know. But what good is a sidekick if she can’t keep her villain in line? I should have been paying better attention.”

“Anti-hero,” Wes corrects automatically, and it’s almost like normal when she huffs a laugh and lightly elbows him in the side.

Wes could happily sit here for an hour, just relishing Kendall’s company, but there’s a question that won’t leave him alone. Hesitantly, he finally asks, “But you’re okay, right? They haven’t…hurt you, or anything?”

She shakes her head. “No, not at all. They’ve actually been super kind. They even waited for me to finish my exam before dragging me out of school, so, you know, that was nice of them.” She stiffens as a thought occurs to her, sitting upright with wide eyes. “Have they hurt you?”

Wes hastens to reassure her. “No, no, I’m fine. Really,” he adds when she continues to look dubious. “They’ve been…a lot more decent than I thought they would.” High praise, considering he’s talking about the League here.

She relaxes a little. “Oh, well, that’s fine then.” She pulls her legs up so she’s sitting cross-legged on the bunk, rubbing the back of her neck. “Actually, uh…they’ve sort of. Um. Recruited me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She waves a hand. “I mean, I made a ray gun and a giant robot out of spare parts I found at a junkyard. Who _wouldn’t_ want me? I’m awesome.”

“And so modest, too,” he chides, but it’s good to see her looking so confident.

She scoffs, shoving lightly at his shoulder. “Shut up. Anyway…yeah. It’s just an internship thing—unpaid, sadly—working in R&D until I get out of school. If they like what they see, they said they’d probably offer me a job. And, let’s face it, I’ll probably say yes, because the League gets all the cool toys.”

He can’t help but smile. All Kendall had ever wanted to do was build cool stuff. He can be happy for her, even if she does eventually end up working for the League. Because she’s not exactly wrong—the League _does_ get cool stuff, and increasingly, more and more new innovations are coming from League R &D. So good for her.

“That’s awesome, Ken. You can come visit me in jail and tell me all about it.”

Her face shifts, and she frowns. “You’re not going to jail, Wes.” 

“Sure.”

“Really. You’re not a bad guy.” He gives her a bland, incredulous look, but she waves it aside. “Okay, yes, you went a little whackadoodle, no denying that, but you didn’t actually kill the police commissioner. And you’ve hardly ever hurt anyone. If anything, they’ll give you community service or something for all the property damage you’ve incurred over the years. They’re not going to throw you in jail for that.”

Wes wants to believe her, but he’s never had that much faith in the system. Not since Anthony. And he trusts the League even less.

She reaches out, gives his arm a squeeze. “You’ll see. It’ll all work out.”

\---

He gets another visit from Dr. Ryan before the agents return. Dr. Ryan says things are going well and looking very promising, but he still can’t quite believe it when they say he’s getting released. 

“What?”

“We’re letting you go.” Agent Coppola folds her arms over her chest and scowls at him. “So anytime you want to get up…”

“I don’t understand. You’re just letting me go?”

“Not _just_.” Agent Paek wiggles his hand in a sort of ‘meh’ gesture. “There are some things you’ll need to be made aware of. But you’re not going to jail, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Huh. Maybe Kendall was right after all.

“Can we get going?” Agent Coppola snaps. “I have a pilates class in an hour, so we need to get a move on.”

Since they are apparently releasing him, he follows him out the door.

They give him a change of clothes and a restroom to change in. _His_ clothes, as it turns out; he recognizes the suit and shirt. They must have raided his wardrobe while they were looking for evidence. He probably should feel violated, but it feels too good to be in his own clothing again, so he really can’t complain.

Once dressed, they guide him down the hall, Agent Paek in the lead and Agent Coppola at his back. He gets a more comprehensive look at this part of the building than he’s ever really had before, but honestly, it looks more like an office building than anything else. Lots of bland hallways and offices with plaques on the doors.

They stop in front of one office that says “Mike Sutton, Director” in embossed letters, and Agent Paek gestures for him to enter.

Wes balks a little. “Director of what?”

“You’ll find out.” Agent Coppola leans past him, turns the handle, and the door swings open wide. “In.”

Wes has a flash of the gaping maw of some great beast, and he kind of wishes he’d stayed in his cell.

He goes in.

\---

Mike Sutton is not what Wes expected of the Director of the LA League. He is a short, squat, grey-haired man who shakes Wes’s hand and smiles genially when he invites Wes to sit. He has a sound machine on his windowsill and a sand garden on his desk and he is incredibly, remarkably calm.

“I’ve turned over a new leaf,” Sutton says, running the tiny wooden rake through the sand garden. “I’ve found it helps when dealing with the superhero element.”

“I see,” Wes says, even though he doesn’t at all.

Sutton exhales softly, running the rake around a pebble in the sand garden. “Who are you, Mr. Mitchell?”

Wes resists the urge to squirm. “Don’t you have a file on me, or something?”

“Oh, I absolutely do.” Sutton rakes a gentle wave in the sand, four parallel lines curling from one edge to the other. “Injustice. Appeared a year and a half ago, rated a class E vigilante. With the advent of technical gadgets fourteen months ago—courtesy of your friend, Miss Zehetner—classification was upgraded to a class C villain. And yet.” He pauses significantly, moving a pebble from one end of the garden to the other. Wes watches the stone.

“And yet,” Sutton continues, “I have never had so many people speak up for a villain.”

Wes chances a look up.

Sutton nods. “You have stunning character references from every coworker we’ve spoken with. Miss Zehetner gave a very impassioned thirty-minute speech about how you were a bad guy but you weren’t a _bad guy_. Even one of my own superheroes vouched for you.”

That makes Wes perk up. He bites his tongue to keep from asking who it was. He has an idea, but he’s done so well to avoid thinking about Travis since he was apprehended, he’s not going to break his streak now.

The older man looks down at a file in front of him, though he doesn’t open it. “Dr. Ryan doesn’t think you’re a threat. And yet, you tried to kill the police commissioner, and you’ve taken every chance you can to strike at the police force. So. Are you a threat, Mr. Mitchell?”

Sutton looks at him, and for all his genial, gentle-seeming nature, there’s steel in his gaze. This is a man who runs the League of Superheroes, who can handle hundreds of agents and a dozen superheroes under his command. This is not a man to be trifled with.

“I…”

Wes bites back his first, sarcastic response and takes a breath. Then another. If he says the wrong thing here, they could easily throw him in a dark hole somewhere and he would never see the light of day again. 

“I hate the police,” he admits. No doubt Sutton knows that—he admitted as much to Dr. Ryan earlier, it’s probably in his file. “But I don’t…I don’t want to kill anyone. I just…” He raises his hands helplessly. “I just want to fix a system that’s broken.” 

That’s all he’s ever wanted to do, since the day he got a phone call saying his client killed himself. Since the day he realized the wrong people were getting hurt, and he was helpless to stop it.

Injustice may not have changed anything at all, but at least he was _trying_. At least he wasn’t sitting there, hating himself for doing nothing.

There’s more compassion in Sutton’s eyes than Wes ever expected to see. He’s spent so much time hating the League, he’s forgotten it’s full of people who might actually sympathize with what he’s trying to do.

More than that, he forgot it _was_ full of people. He built the League into this conglomeration of mindless drones to be taken out, just like he did to the police force, that he forgot about the individuals. 

He was always doing this to help _people_. He’s not sure when he lost sight of that.

(A few days in a cell with nothing but his thoughts to occupy him as made him realize just how far out of line he’s fallen. To realize just how broken he’s become. Self-reflection is a bitch.)

Sutton sighs, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers over his belly. “You know,” he says, “We really do a lot of good here. I’m sure you have a poor impression of us, and I’m not sure I can really blame you. But we’re not the bad guys either.”

Wes makes a non-committal noise and waits for the punchline.

“We could use a man like you on our team.”

Wes chokes.

“You’re a hell of a good lawyer, Mr. Mitchell. You want to change the system, what better place than from here? I’m sure we could find a spot for you on our legal team.”

He sits up, pushes a folder across the desk. Wes stares at it.

Work for the _League?_ Is the man crazy? Wes has spent over a year repeatedly fighting the League and everything it stands for. Why would Wes want to _work_ for it? He may be reevaluating himself, but change takes time and Wes has never been that good at it in the first place.

And yet…

“Or you can go back to your old job,” Sutton continues, before Wes’s traitorous mind can go any further with that thought. “Working pro bono cases and changing nothing. We’d keep tabs on you for a while, of course, just to make sure you don’t go vigilante again, but you’d have nothing to do with us. You’d never see another agent unless you step out of line.”

“I’d be free…but you’d keep tabs on me,” Wes repeats.

“That’s right.”

“So…I’d be on parole. Do I get a cute little ankle bracelet too?”

Sutton laughs lightly. “Come now, Mr. Mitchell. We’re the League of Superheroes. We have better ways of keeping track of people than ankle bracelets.”

Wes stares at him.

Sutton smiles. “That was a joke.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“Well…no. It wasn’t.” Sutton sighs, leaning forward with his hands folded in front of him. “Mr. Mitchell, you tried to kill the police commissioner. Now, maybe it was a one-time thing like Dr. Ryan says. Maybe it was stress, or a psychotic break. But maybe, for you, it was a Tuesday. I don’t really know. So if you walk out that door, I need to know that you’re not going to do it again. And I need to know that if you are, we can be in place to stop it. So yes, you will be on parole. Nothing in that folder will change that.”

Wes looks at the folder. Hesitantly, he flips it open. Inside is an employment contract and a thin stack of paperwork.

“The only question, Mr. Mitchell, is if you’re going to do your parole out there, fighting a fight that I think you’ve realized you can’t win on your own. Or are you going to do it here, where you’ll have a team to support any change you try to make?”

Slowly, Wes closes the folder. His hand is shaking; he folds his hands in lap and stares at the blank, unassuming folder. His head is a swirl—he doesn’t even know what to think right now.

“It’s your choice, of course. But you should seriously think about it.”

\---

Travis is standing in the lobby. Wes stops, staring at him, and waits for everything to bubble up to the surface, all the emotions he’s been pointedly repressing these past few days in custody. He waits for the anger, and the sharp, horrible sting of betrayal, and the cold hollow emptiness that feels like grieving, something he knows all too well from Anthony.

Instead, mostly, he just feels numb, and a little tired. 

Travis spots him, hesitates, then shuffles over.

“Hey, Wes.”

Wes grips the folder and nods stiffly. “Travis.” He may not be feeling much of anything right now, but that doesn’t mean he has to let it show; his voice is cold and withdrawn, and Travis flinches a little.

He recovers quickly, shoving his hands in his pocket and going on. “I heard they were letting you out, so I wanted to come see how you were doing.” He pauses. Wes stares stonily at him. He sighs. “How are you doing, Wes?”

“Fine.”

Travis’s face drops, shoulders slumping. “I didn’t think it would go down like that, Wes. I definitely didn’t know they’d keep you so long. But I couldn’t—” His shoulders, if possible, drop even more. “You had to be stopped, Wes.”

This, at least, they can agree on. “I know.” At the time, it had seemed like the most reasonable thing to do, but actually killing the police commissioner…that would have stayed with Wes forever. He couldn’t have come back from that.

So in a way, he’s glad Travis was there to stop him, even if it did end up with him in a cell for all this time.

But at the same time…

“You punctured my lung once,” he says, offhand and casual, like this is any other opening statement. Like it has no more importance than the weather.

Travis does a full-body recoil, face going pasty. “What? When?” 

“The night of the police ball. You punched me and punctured my lung.”

“Shit.” Travis rubs his hand over his mouth, and now he looks like he’s going to be sick. “Shit, Wes, I’m sorry. I didn’t— _shit_.”

“You punctured my lung,” Wes repeats, “and that still didn’t hurt as much as finding out the truth.”

A flash of temper in those blue eyes, and Travis’s chin comes up. “Hey, that’s not fair. It’s not my fault you were the villain I’d been fighting all this time!”

“And it’s not my fault you were my nemesis,” Wes can’t help snapping back. They stand there glaring at each other, and for a minute, it’s not Travis and Wes, it’s Golden Boy and Injustice squaring off in the middle of the lobby.

The moment passes, and Travis looks away first. “You lied to me too, you know,” he mutters, scuffing his shoe against the floor. 

All that damn self-reflection (and a little prompting by Dr. Ryan) forces him to admit, “I know. I’m sorry.”

Travis’s head comes up, and his eyes are sad. “I didn’t know, at first,” he says, so earnest, like he’s desperate Wes knows the truth. “I didn’t figure it out until after my place blew up. It wasn’t like I was…I really did like you, Wes.”

“Me too.” The smile Wes makes is full of heartbreak and tears, though his eyes stay dry. He tries not to imagine all the things they could have had if only they hadn’t been themselves. If only they’d just been _normal_. 

“Goodbye, Travis.” 

It’s more than a farewell. It’s an ending.

He walks by and leaves Travis standing there, and he doesn’t look back.

\---

The apartment is a mess. The League agents that went through didn’t exactly _ransack_ the place, but they were very, _very_ thorough. Wes stands in the kitchen, looking around, and it’s not the mess that hits him. It’s how empty the table looks, without bits and bobs from Kendall’s little projects scattered around. If he goes down the hall, Kendall’s bedroom will probably look bare, all of her equipment gone and her blueprints confiscated. If he ventures into his own bedroom, his suit will be gone, along with any other spare gadgets he’d tucked away. 

This was, for all intents and purposes, Injustice’s (and his sidekick’s) lair. Now it’s just an apartment in an old brick building.

The thought makes him more depressed than it ought to.

It’s still early. He doesn’t know where Kendall is—clearly, she hasn’t been home much, if at all, since she was released from custody, but knowing her, wherever she is, she’ll be out for a few hours more anyway. If he starts cleaning now, he can probably get most of this picked up before she gets back.

Cleaning will be good. It’ll keep his mind off of things for a while.

He sets the folder from the League on the counter and gets the cleaning bucket from under the sink.

\---

He has most of the common areas picked up by the time Kendall makes it home. She tosses her bag on the table and picks up the folder from the counter, flipping through it while Wes is sweeping under the couch and can’t stop her.

“Huh,” she says, and then “Are you going to join?”

Wes rises to his feet, dustpan in hand, and stares at the folder in her hand as though it’s a bomb. “I don’t know,” he admits.

Once more she goes, “Huh,” and looks down at the folder.

They don’t talk about it again.

\---

He lost his job. It’s probably not as much of a surprise as it should have been. After all, he didn’t take a leave of absence or ask for vacation. He simply stopped going. And while Wes is pretty sure his vigilante identity wasn’t a wide-spread secret, having a couple of League agents show up and interview his coworkers wouldn’t have done him any favors. 

Laura is very sympathetic when he comes to pick up his final paycheck. “I just don’t think it’s a really good fit,” she tells him. “You weren’t happy here.”

Jeff takes that moment to come out of the records room with a box, which he hands over to Wes. Inside are all the things from his desk, which amounts, really, to some office supplies and a small potted plant a client gave him once.

How is it that he’s worked here for almost two years and he doesn’t have anything to show for it but a stapler and a plant?

“Thanks for everything,” he tells them, and he means it. They were good people to work with.

But they’re right. It wasn’t really a good fit.

\---

Wes has never felt more at home than those times he was in costume, running through the streets, looking for someone to help. Some days, it felt like the lawyer was the costume, and he was just biding his time until he could change and reveal his true self for the night.

Now that it’s all been taken away, he doesn’t know what to do.

\---

For three days Wes pretends the folder doesn’t exist. He doesn’t even look at it when he goes by. But there comes a point when he can’t ignore it anymore, so he picks it up and takes it to the table.

Kendall wanders in while he’s reading the non-disclosure, looking for loopholes or traps. She falls into the chair opposite him, and she goes, “Huh.”

He looks up, narrows his eyes. “What?”

“Nothing.” Kendall has a very convincing innocent face. Wes isn’t fooled.

“You keep making that sound, that little ‘huh’, like you’re surprised. So _what?”_

“ _Nothing_.” She shrugs. “I just thought it’s about time you signed those papers. There’s this really nice place at the League housing I’ve got my eye on, so if you weren’t getting on this by the end of the week, I was gonna start dropping some really unsubtle hints.”

His brow furrows. “If you want to move out, why don’t you just go?”

“Because I’m worried about you and I don’t think you should be alone right now,” she says with no hesitation.

“…I don’t know if that’s sweet or insulting.” Wes frowns. “No, wait, I definitely think I’m a little offended. You didn’t even need to think about that.”

“Yeah, well,” she shrugs again. “Last time I left you to your own devices you went whackadoodle and tried to kill the police commissioner. I think I have a right to be concerned.”

Wes sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s never going to live that down, is he? Okay, so she kind of has a point, but _still_ … “I wish you would stop using that word.”

“But it’s such a fun word. Whackadoodle. Whacka _doooo_ dle.”

He glowers balefully at her. “You’re fired. I’m finding a new sidekick.”

She snorts and snaps back, “Yeah, right,” and then she grins at him, and it…it feels good, having things almost back to normal, just for a moment.

Unfortunately, moments are short, and they never last. Wes exhales slowly, turning back to the contract in front of him. “What makes you think I’m going to sign?” He’s genuinely curious; he hasn’t decided yet, but she acts like it’s already a done deal. “I hate the League.”

She acknowledges this fact with a small tilt of her head. Then she says, in the tone of someone stating the obvious, “Yeah, but you didn’t toss it in the shredder the minute you got home. If you didn’t throw it out then, you’re not gonna do it now.”

He stares at her, dumbstruck.

She nods, pushing herself to her feet. “Lemme know when you sign so I can start packing.” Flashing him a quick smile, she heads to her room before he can come up with a suitable reply.

Wes looks back down at the contract.

\---

An hour and a half later, he signs the damn thing.

It’s really annoying when she’s right.

\---

“So here you go.” Agent Paek spreads his arms like a gameshow host, turning in a circle in the middle of the living room. “Three bedroom, two bath, open living space. And you get a balcony.”

“Hear that, Wes?” Kendall bounces to the windows, peering out at the view. “We get a _balcony_.”

“We had a fire escape at our last place,” Wes retorts, wandering to the balcony doors. The view is spectacular, he’ll give it that. And the balcony is of a decent size, enough for a small table and a couple of chairs. But still. “Is there a fire escape?”

“The fire escape is just down the hall,” Agent Paek assures him, and Wes lets out an annoyed little ‘harumph.’ 

“Ignore him,” Kendall tells the agent. “He’s just pissed because he doesn’t want to like this place and he kind of does. Do you know what kind of internet connection you have here?”

“Um…no. But it’s fast, so, you know, it’s probably pretty good.” The agent rubs the back of his neck and shifts the topic back to his real estate spiel, which he’s clearly more comfortable with. “There’s a pool, and a fitness center, and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. We’ve got a laundry in the basement, and a dining center on the first floor. There’s even a garden on the roof.”

Wes perks up at that, then hastily inspects the blinds when he sees Kendall smirking smugly at him.

“Do you live here too, then?” the tech asks the agent.

“Two floors down, room 612. You need anything, just give me a call.” He guides her towards the bedrooms, but Wes can still hear him as he moves down the hall. “Everyone in the building works at the League, but most of them are civilians or staff. The agents and supers tend to like their privacy. Here’s the first bedroom,” and the sound of a door opening.

Kendall’s startled cry of, “Holy _crap_ , this is _huge!”_ makes Wes snort to himself. Shaking his head, he opens the door and steps out onto the balcony, leaning against the rail.

He supposes it could be worse.

\---

His first day on the job, Agent Coppola walks him to the legal offices and puts him in the very capable hands of Alex MacFarland. The agent says a short, terse farewell and leaves, and Alex smiles at him.

She’s pretty, with dark hair and sparkling blue eyes the color of a cloudless sky and the way she holds herself makes Wes believe she can stand down any challenge without flinching. She reminds him of himself, the way he stood, once, before Anthony died and he lost his drive.

“Let me show you to your desk,” she tells him with a smile, guiding him down the hall. His desk sits in a corner of a shared office, at an angle where he can almost see out the window, if he leans forward just a little.

Her desk, as it turns out, is right across from him. Wes wonders if that’s because he’s the new guy, or because she knows who he is and they want to keep an eye on him.

(“Only a select few will know how you came to work at the League,” Agent Coppola tells him as they walk to his new office. “To most people, you’re just a new hire. We’d prefer if you kept it that way. The last thing we need is for word to get out that we’re hiring former villains.”

“Anti-hero,” Wes corrects, trotting to keep up. The woman does cardio or something because she’s power-walking down these halls at Mach 5 without breaking a sweat. “Who knows?”

“Director Sutton, of course.” She doesn’t slow even a little bit. Wes is half-certain she’s punishing him in the most passive-aggressive way for the whole Injustice thing. “Myself and Agent Paek. Dr. Ryan. Your sidekick and Golden Boy. I don’t know who else might have been informed, though possibly your new boss.”

If the agent notices his small flinch at the mention of Travis, she doesn’t say anything. He coughs to cover it up and says, “Oh, well, this will be fun.”

She gives him a sharp look out of the corner of her eye and simply says, “We’re here.”)

Alex comes back over with a smile once he’s gotten himself situated and unpacked his briefcase. “All settled?” she asks, a dimple in one cheek. “Great. How about I give you a tour and then I’ll catch you up on what we’re working on?”

Tentatively, Wes smiles back. “That sounds great.” 

\---

It could be worse, Wes keeps reminding himself. He has a job. He has Kendall and a new apartment and a lovely coworker who doesn’t act like he’s anything than what he appears to be. It could be so much worse.

But he feels like he’s been hollowed out, and he doesn’t know how to fill that space inside of him. At least with Injustice, he had a purpose, no matter how misguided it may have seemed.

Now…he doesn’t know what to do with himself, doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do now.

It could be worse. But it could be so much better, too.

\---

“How are you doing, Wes?”

He shifts in the chair, looking everywhere but at her. She has bookshelves on the wall behind her, and he can almost make out the titles if he squints a little. “Fine.”

Dr. Ryan sighs. “You’re not very keen on this process, are you, Wes?”

He snorts. “Not particularly, no.”

“The director simply wants to make sure you’re adjusting well.”

“And does he do that for every new hire?” Wes scoffs, crossing his arms. “Of course not.”

Dr. Ryan sits there, patient and silent, and it’s really, really annoying.

“ _Fine_.” Wes flips a hand, just shy of making a rude gesture. “I’m working for a company I hate and you people have taken away the only real hobby I enjoyed. What else do you want to know?”

She continues to sit there, pursing her lips. She doesn’t respond, not right away, fingers tapping on her knee.

Finally, she says, “Give me three positive things.”

He hesitates. “What?”

“I want you to give me three positive things in your life. I’m sure there must be some. They don’t have to be big—just any positive thing you can think of.”

He shifts, then tries to settle down so he looks calm. This is what he hates about shrinks, always making him second-guess himself. “Um… One positive thing…I’m not in jail.”

She nods approvingly. “That’s always a good one. Two more.”

He racks his brain for a couple more things he can add to the list. It’s harder than he thinks it probably should be. “Uh… God, I don’t know. My apartment is better than my last one, and my coworkers are nice, I guess.”

The smile she gives him is insultingly proud. “Very good.” She makes a quick note on her pad, telling him, “That’s going to be your homework for next week. Three more positive things. And don’t try to get away with saying the same things, I’m making a list.” She taps the pad with her pen and raises an eyebrow at him.

He rolls his eyes. “ _Awesome_.” The sarcasm in his voice is fatal.

Dr. Ryan is unaffected. She merely exhales and sits back a little in her chair. “Do you have any idea why _that_ is your homework assignment, Wes?”

He shrugs and squints at a red-bound book on her bookshelf.

If she notices his distraction, she doesn’t act like it. She just sits there, studying him, and he can feel her gaze on his skin, making goosebumps rise on his flesh. He scratches the back of his arm and wishes he were pretty much anywhere else. Hell, the cell they tossed him in would be preferable to this. 

(He’s never liked people trying to get him to open up like this.)

“Would you like to know what I think, Wes?” she asks blandly, after more than a few minutes have passed in silence.

“Not particularly,” he responds, just as blandly.

She ignores him. “I think you get focused.” It’s amazing, how she can say something and have it sound like an insult and a compliment all at once. “I think you become so focused on one thing at a time that you get…obsessed, almost. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’m sure it helps with your work, allowing you to see details and make connections other people don’t. And no doubt it was essential in your vigilante plans.”

She pauses here, giving him a chance to comment. He doesn’t.

Exhaling softly, she crosses her legs. “The problem comes when you turn that focus towards your emotions.”

His eyes—unwillingly—flick towards her. She, Doctor eagle eyes, notices and gives him a gentle, encouraging smile. “I think you get focused, Wes, on one emotion, to the point where you push aside everything else.”

His hands tighten on the arms of his chair.

“For a long time, you were grieving, full of anger and pain from happened with Anthony, and you expressed that emotion with Injustice. Then, for a time, you were happy, and you no longer needed that outlet.”

Wes digs his nails into the fabric and stares at the red-bound book on the shelf so hard his vision blurs.

“And then you were betrayed.” Her voice drops, softening the verbal blow. “And blinded by your rage, your depression, you lashed out, and you did something…unthinkable.”

There’s no condemnation in her voice, no judgement, just a gentle sympathy, but Wes feels drawn tight as a bow string, waiting for the sword to fall.

Dr. Ryan, even softer than before, asks, “What do you feel now, Wes?”

Wes closes his eyes and clutches the chair to keep from falling apart. “Nothing,” he hisses through clenched teeth. “I’m _fine_.”

That first statement is a lot more truthful than the second, and she can read it on every line of his face. She sighs. “The problem, Wes, comes when you push everything else aside, bottling it all up until you’ve only got one thing you _can_ feel. It’s not _healthy_. You need to open up and let _go_ , because if you bottle everything up you’re just going to explode again.”

Slowly, he opens his eyes, looks at her. He’s trembling in his seat and he can’t seem to stop. “I don’t know how.”

When she smiles, Wes feels unexpectedly reassured, like maybe she can actually help him after all.

“Well,” she says, “that’s certainly a start.”

\---

The first time he saw Travis, after everything went down, the hero was waiting in front of the elevator of the apartment complex, his hands in his pockets and his head bobbing along to his headphones. Wes stopped dead in his tracks, grabbed Kendall’s arm, and hissed, “What is _he_ doing here?” 

“Hmm? Oh, he lives here.” Kendall paused, frowned a bit. “Didn’t I mention that?” 

“You most certainly did _not_.” Wes resisted the urge to hide. “What do you _mean_ he lives here?”

“Like, he lives here, just like we do. Apartment 503. It’s only temporary, or I totally wouldn’t have picked this place.” Her frown deepened. “Are you _sure_ I didn’t tell you?”

“Temporary,” Wes repeated. He settled for glaring at the back of Travis’s head, just _daring_ him to turn around.

He didn’t.

“It’s just until he finds a new place,” Kendall explained, in that way she had where she knew everything about everyone, even the things she wasn’t technically supposed to know. “You did blow up his warehouse.”

Which evoked a lively discussion of all the ways that absolutely was _not_ his fault, and the next time he glanced at the elevators, Travis was gone.

He still sees Travis around, sometimes. Never at work—the heroes work in a different part of the League than the legal team. But they’ve crossed paths in the lobby several times and shared one painfully awkward elevator ride. 

Every single time, Travis drops his gaze and hunches his shoulders and he doesn’t say a word. Wes has so many things _he_ wants to say, but they all end up stuck in his throat, and he never lets any of them out.

He’s supposed to be happy that Travis is leaving him alone. It’s just what he wanted.

It really sucks.

\---

“You haven’t talked about Travis much,” Dr. Ryan says out of nowhere.

Wes digs his fingers into the arms of his chair and studies the bookshelf. She’s changed the order of one of the shelves, he sees. “I don’t want to talk about Travis.” Even the thought makes his throat close up.

“I think you should talk about him,” she says.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he snaps through gritted teeth. “I’m over it. I’m over _him_.”

“I see.” There’s a long pause. Wes waits. Sure enough… “Do you ever see him?”

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath or two. _Just twenty more minutes_ … Twenty minutes, and he’s free for another week. “Sometimes.”

“And how does that make you feel?”

_Like I’ve been gouged out. Like someone stabbed me in the back, then stabbed me in the chest. Like I want to cry and scream and rage because he won’t even bother to look at me, after everything that happened between us, he can’t even LOOK at me anymore._

“Fine.”

The sound Dr. Ryan makes is long-suffering, which really isn’t fair considering she’s only known him a few months now. “Wes, do you remember that conversation we had a couple of weeks ago? The one about bottling your feelings, and how it isn’t healthy? Do you remember the part where I said you needed to let it out? This would be a really good place to start.”

“No.”

“Nothing you say will leave this room.”

“That’s not—” Wes’s eyes dart around the room, looking for an escape that doesn’t exist. “That’s not the problem.”

“Then what is the problem?” Wes doesn’t answer. Dr. Ryan makes a thoughtful little sound in her throat. “Is it that you don’t want me to hear what you have to say? Or that _you_ don’t want to hear what you have to say?”

His eyes cut to her. “What are you—?”

She leans forward, hands clasped together on her knee. “Since you’ve been coming here, you’ve been more than happy to talk about all the ways you hate the League and the police and superheroes and the justice system as a whole. But you never talk about Travis.”

“So?”

“So, you are very good at shoving your emotions aside. Remember those words we used, like denial and repression? It makes me curious what you’re so intent on avoiding about your feelings for Travis.”

Nope, Wes can’t do this sitting down. He throws his hands in the air, climbs to his feet. “Nothing! I’m not avoiding anything! I hate him!”

She merely blinks serenely at him and asks, “Why?”

“Why? Because! Because he lied to me!”

“You lied to him as well,” she points out.

He paces in front of his chair. “That’s different. Hardly counts.”

“How?”

“It just _is_ , okay?” Not his best defense; if he were in court, the opposing council would tear him to pieces. 

But he’s not in court. He’s here, facing his own damn _feelings_ , and that’s harder than any legal challenge he’s taken on.

“He betrayed me,” he snaps, spinning on his heel and pacing the opposite length of the room.

Dr. Ryan watches him, much a calm counterpoint to his nervous tension, which really only serves to make him _more_ anxious. He feels like she’s just sitting there waiting for him to crack. “How?” she asks again.

“He—he just did! He lied to me. He wasn’t who he said he was. He made me—!” No, no, he’s not going there. But it’s there, inside him, clawing at his throat, trying to get out, and he’s afraid if she pushes any further he won’t be able to hold back. He bites his tongue, but he’s not sure it helps much.

“Wes,” Dr. Ryan says, a gentle, coaxing murmur, “what did Travis do?”

And the words burst out of him, try as he might to hold them back, leaping from his throat in a torrent.

“He was everything I hated and he made me love him anyway!”

Immediately, Wes stops dead and claps his hand over his mouth, but it’s too late.

“I see.” Slowly, Dr. Ryan leans back in her chair, watching him with that quiet, gentle gaze that promises no recriminations but makes Wes feel like dying of shame anyway.

Slowly, Wes sinks back into his chair and drops his head in his hands.

“How do you feel about him now, Wes?” she asks, gently prodding because she’s a goddamn _shrink_ and she can’t leave well enough alone.

Wes doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t have an answer to give her.

\---

Sometimes the most painful realizations are the ones that were never admitted in the first place. 

\---

“Did you know?”

Kendall jumps, almost dropping her tablet. “Jesus, Wes, you scared the crap out of me!” She pauses, taking in his slumped position on the couch, and tilts her head. “You okay?”

“Did you know?” Wes repeats, watching her. “About Anthony? Before all of this started.”

She blinks, surprised by the question. “Course I did,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “My upstairs neighbor was dressing up in a costume and getting himself beat up pretty much every night. I had to find out if you were some kinda nutjob before I offered to help.”

“You never said anything.”

“Well, no. It wasn’t any of my business. I figured you’d talk about it eventually, which was totally my mistake. I _severely_ underestimated your ability to _not_ talk about things.” She moves towards the couch, eyes roaming over him. “Are you okay, Wes?”

He sighs, drops his head against the back of the couch, and avoids the question. “Did you know about Travis?”

“No.” The answer is quick, unhesitating. “I swear, Wes, I would have told you. I don’t think they even keep heroes’ identities on computer. It’s probably all in paper files, written in code—”

“Not that.” She pauses mid-sentence, and he can feel her stare on him. He sighs again and closes his eyes. “Did you know about me? And Travis.”

“Oh.” She closes the distance, settles on the couch beside him, and he can feel her arm pressed against his own, a steady, reassuring sign of her presence. She’s quiet a long minute, contemplating; Wes waits. “Yeah,” she says eventually, “Yeah, I guess I did.”

“How?” He opens his eyes, staring plaintively at the ceiling as though it’ll have all the answers if he just looks hard enough. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to.” She shrugs. “I worked with you for, what, a year? I never saw you smile that much. You were happy, Wes, like _stupidly_ happy. It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

He sighs again, slumping against her shoulder. “It was easier when I just hated everything,” he mutters, wrung dry by all these stupid _feelings_.

Kendall’s hand comes up, wrapping around the side of his head, thumb sweeping comfortingly across his temple. “I know it was.”

\---

“You’re very close to Kendall, aren’t you?” Dr. Ryan asks. “You talk about her all the time.”

“Yeah.” Wes shifts, crosses his legs. “She’s my sidekick. And my roommate. She’s my closest friend. Sometimes I think—” Shit, he hadn’t meant to say that.

Dr. Never-Misses-Anything Ryan tilts her head to the side. “Sometimes you think what?”

Damn her. Wes looks down, picks at his pants.

She sighs. “Wes. This is a safe space. You can talk to me. Isn’t that better than trying to deal with it all on your own?”

Right, because it’s so easy to break down years of conditioning. Wes learned a long time ago not to talk about his feelings, because no one really cared.

And look where it got him.

He exhales slowly, closes his eyes. It’s easier, somehow, with his eyes closed. More like he’s talking to himself than an audience. He admits, “Sometimes I think if I’d had her around after—after Anthony, I wouldn’t have self-destructed so badly.” He swallows. “Her, or—or anyone like her, really.”

“I see.” No judgement, no agreement or disagreement. Dr. Ryan is completely neutral; it’s one of the things he likes about her. “There was no one you could lean on?”

“No.” He sighs and opens his eyes, studying the bookshelf over her shoulder. “I was always too busy, first with school, then with work. I never bothered with it. Kendall and Travis were the first—”

Damn it. Damn it, _damn it_ , she has a way of getting to him!

“Kendall’s a very good friend,” Dr. Ryan says, but Wes doesn’t relax, because he’s learned better these past few months. Sure enough— “Have you talked to Travis?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

“Because. It’s not a good idea.” He glowers at her. “What if he gets mad? He punctured my lung once, you know.”

The look on her face says she does indeed know. He narrows his eyes. “I’ve told you that story before, haven’t I?”

“You have. It’s one of your favorites.” She folds her hands in her lap and studies him. “Do you honestly believe Travis would hurt you?”

“Punctured. Lung.”

“Ah, but he didn’t know who you were. At the time, you were merely a villain that needed to be defeated.”

“Anti-hero,” Wes corrects automatically.

Dr. Ryan is too good to be distracted. “Do you truly believe Travis would hurt you if you talked to him?”

As much as he’d like to say yes and end this conversation right here, it kind of feels _wrong_ to lie to his therapist. “No,” he sighs, “No, he wouldn’t do that. He might yell, but he wouldn’t hurt me.”

“It’s possible he wouldn’t even be angry,” Dr. Ryan offers.

“So what, he’ll forgive me and we’ll skip off into the sunset together?” Wes scoffs. “Yeah, _right_.”

“Forgive you?” She perks up, honing in like a hound on the scent. “That’s an odd word choice.”

Instantly defensive, Wes tenses and crosses his arms. “No it’s not.”

“It is.” She does that thing again, studying him as though she’ll be able to see all his layers if she looks hard enough. “Do you feel you’ve done something that needs to be forgiven, Wes?”

“No.” He clenches his jaw, shakes his head stubbornly. He can feel himself trembling, though he tries to hide it. “It can’t be forgiven.”

“Can’t be?” The doctor’s brow furrows as she frowns. “You didn’t even hurt anyone.”

She’s so puzzled and so wrong and he explodes. “I killed him! I wasn’t good enough and now he’s _dead_ and it’s _my fault_. That’s unforgiveable!”

Fuck. Fuck _fuck_ , she has this way of getting under his skin and making him admit things he didn’t want to reveal to _anyone_. “I really hate it when you do that.” He’s a lawyer; he should know better than to fall into such obvious traps. Get them emotional and they’ll blurt it all out. And yet…

Dr. Ryan presses her hands together and holds them in front of her mouth, watching him. He fidgets under her scrutiny, waiting for her to say something, _anything_ , tense as a bowstring and it feels like the _slightest_ thing will set him off again.

The doctor breaths out, a low, whispered murmur. “Oh, Wes.”

His hands clench, fingernails digging into his arms, and he looks anywhere but at her.

“Wes,” she repeats, just as softly, “It’s wasn’t your fault.”

“No.” Throat tight, he shakes his head, a familiar denial hot on his tongue. “No, it is. I—I should have—”

“I’ve read the file, Wes. You did everything you could for that boy, and when that didn’t work, you were prepared to do even more. You did _nothing_ wrong. _Nothing_ that needs to be forgiven.”

Wes blinks tears from his eyes and shakes his head again, against her words or the tears or the emotions bubbling inside him, he doesn’t know. “But I…”

“What Anthony Padua did, he did to himself. It was _not your fault_ , Wes.”

_Not your fault._

Those are the words that break Wes completely.

\---

Maybe if he hadn’t been alone, he would have been okay.

Because if someone had said that to him two years ago, maybe he wouldn’t be where he is right now.

\---

At 3:36 Saturday afternoon, Wes gathers his laundry in the hamper and waits for Kendall. Together, they head for the elevator.

(Dr. Ryan was very supportive of him regaining his routines. “I think you’re right,” she’d agreed once he’d explained, “I think they are very good for grounding you. So definitely resume your laundry days, your cleaning, whatever settles you. There’s nothing wrong with doing things that make you comfortable, that make it a little bit easier.”) 

“How are you doing?” Kendall asks as they enter the elevator.

“Fine,” Wes answers, pressing the button for the basement. He adjusts his grip on his laundry basket, frowning at her. “Why?”

She shrugs. “I dunno. You seem…perkier lately. It’s good.”

“Ah.” Wes shifts and watches the numbers above the door. They can’t count down fast enough. “Yes. Well. That’s…”

“It’s okay, Wes.” Kendall pats his shoulder, looking somewhere between amused and condescending. “I’m not making you talk about your feelings here.”

“Thank you.”

“That’s what Dr. Ryan is for!”

“I hate you so much.”

“You have said that so often, I’ve stopped believing you entirely.” 

Wes closes his eyes, like maybe that will block her out. It doesn’t work at _all_. He sighs and opens his eyes once more. “It’s…helping,” he admits. “Therapy. I hate it and wish I could stop going every week, but…it has helped me work through some things.”

The elevator dings, the doors sliding open, and Kendall grins at him as she steps into the hallway. “Things like…Travis?”

“That’s absolutely none of your business.”

“So you _do_ talk about him!” She bounces down the hall like a hyperactive six-year-old. “Does this mean you’re getting back together?”

“What? Why would I get back together with him?”

“Well, it’s either that or you get over him and move on. I don’t actually care. I just want you to stop moping and pining all the time.”

Wes gapes at her, almost losing his laundry basket. “I…I do not mope, and I _certainly_ don’t _pine_.”

She scoffs, over her shoulder. “Oh, you so do. You pine any more and we could hang Christmas ornaments off your branches. I—”

She stops in the doorway of the laundry room so suddenly Wes almost runs into her. He curses, fumbling with his basket, but before he can demand an explanation, she’s backing up, trying to push him into the hall. “Maybe we should come back another time.”

Which is all good, except _this_ is the time for laundry. Between 3:30 and 4:00 every Saturday, no exceptions, and yes, okay, he’d always originally gone so he could see Travis, but it became part of his routine, and Wes is very fond of his routines. He does his very best not to upset them. Also, Dr. Ryan will be disappointed if he skips, just when he’s starting to get back on track.

Which means he allows Kendall to push him a couple of steps into the hall, then ducks around his roommate into the laundry room.

Travis looks up from laundry machine #6 and blanches. 

For a second, Wes can do nothing but stand there frozen, a dozen things bubbling up in his throat. But the hesitant, wary look on Travis’s face makes them all crash on his tongue, and he just stands there, silent, unable to say anything.

Wes is acutely aware of everything around him; the rumble of the washing machines, the hum of the air conditioner, the tense breaths as Kendall takes her place beside his elbow, but most of all he’s aware of Travis, his wary eyes and clenched jaw and the tense line of his shoulders, and all of a sudden Wes is so very tired of being angry with him.

It was never Travis he was angry at anyway.

He swallows, grip tightening on his laundry basket. “Travis,” he says, nodding stiffly at the other man. His throat is tight, and there’s a pressure in his chest. He doesn’t know how to deal with this. Dr. Ryan didn’t tell him about this part of it.

He just doesn’t want to do any of this anymore.

Ignoring Travis’s startled surprise when Wes said his name, Wes ducks his head and moves towards the machines on the far wall. Kendall quietly follows. 

He hopes she’ll leave it alone. Which, honestly, he should know so much better by now.

“You should talk to him,” she whispers out of the corner of her mouth.

Wes continues sorting his colors from his whites and ignores her.

She leans over and jabs her pointy little elbow into his ribs. “Wes. You should go talk to him.”

“You should mind your own damn business,” he hisses back.

“You need to work things out, right? Well, he’s right here! Go work things out!”

Wes bats her hands away and scowls at her, which does absolutely nothing because she is immune. He dumps his clothes into the washing machine, glancing at Travis from the corner of his eye. The hero is hunched in front of the washer, like he’s trying to make himself as unobtrusive as possible, and Wes feels a pang in his chest.

He’d never really been mad at _Travis_. More than that, he misses being with the other man and how comfortable and easy everything was when they were together. God, he just misses _Travis_.

(“I was happy with Travis,” he’d told Dr. Ryan, in one of his most recent sessions. “I was happy enough that for a while I just… I forgot about Anthony and everything that happened and I—” He had to swallow, curl his fists in his lap. “Can I…am I allowed to be happy like that, after everything?”

And Dr. Ryan’s face had twisted up, like she was about to start crying right there, and she’d said, “Of course you are, Wes. Of course you are.”)

He’d been happy with Travis.

“If I _was_ going to talk to him…” Wes murmurs slowly.

“Oh my god,” Kendall says, without any intonation at all. “Look at this. I forgot my quarters. I need to go get some all the way back in my room. It might take a while.” She ducks around the end of the row, sending Wes a wink as she steps into the hall.

_Kendall, you traitor_. Wes looks down at the shirt in his hands, mustering up his courage. He has no idea what he’s going to say, but _something_ needs to change the status quo, and Travis seems perfectly content to stay all the way on the other side of the laundry room. 

He wishes he had his mask. This was always easier in a mask.

_You could have at least let me ask your advice, Ken_ , Wes grumbles, balling up the shirt and tossing it into the washer. He takes a breath, counts to ten, and leaves the safety of his washing machine, moving across the room.

Travis tenses as he approaches, Wes can see it, but he doesn’t leave. He looks like he’s preparing for a blow. But Travis is invulnerable. Nothing can hurt him.

Except maybe the things that aren’t physical in the first place. 

He doesn’t look up when he says, blandly polite, “Can I help you?” 

There are too many things he wants to say, all vying for attention. Wes takes a deep breath and says the first thing that comes to mind.

“Can I borrow your detergent?”

“Sure.” Travis reaches out, pushes the detergent over. “Here—”

He stops, abruptly, head snapping up. His eyes are like lasers, roaming Wes’s face, searching for—and Wes stands his ground and (hopefully) conveys what he’s trying to convey.

Slowly, Travis’s face shifts, relaxes. “Yeah?” he asks, hope dangling uncertainly at the end of the question.

“Yes.” Wes licks his lips, nerves ravaging his insides. But Travis’s eyes flick down to his mouth, and Wes takes comfort in that. Maybe Travis has missed what they had as much as Wes did. “I, um…I’m not very good at this.” He pauses a beat. “I’ve been told I’m socially awkward.”

The corner of Travis’s mouth curls up, his cheek dimpling, and the tension sloughs off his frame. He slouches attractively against the washing machine, suddenly confident and assured, now that he knows Wes isn’t going to fly off the handle. “Socially awkward, huh? I think it’s cute.”

And the flutters are back, sweeping through him, but these are less nerve-wracking than before. Maybe, he thinks, maybe he needs to find another purpose, as Wesley Mitchell and not Injustice.

Maybe Travis can help with that.

“Would you like to have dinner with me sometime?” he blurts in a clumsy rush, but it has the wonderful effect of making Travis light up, eyes sparkling and a delighted grin crossing his face.

“I’d love to,” the hero says, and Kendall whoops from where she’d been eavesdropping in the hall, and Wes can’t help smiling a little.

It’s a step in the right direction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Dr. Horrible. It is a wonderful little story anti-villainy and how things aren’t always what they seem. Also, it is a musical, which is fabulous. So naturally, when I decided to try my hand at a superhero story, it became this odd little Dr. Horrible AU. Of course. Also has dashes of Megamind and Avengers thrown in there, for good measure.
> 
> This fic was a struggle and a half. I fought with it, I cried over it, I rejoiced when I wrote even a paragraph, and it took over a year to write, I finally got it done! Hooray!
> 
> Thank you for sticking with me till the end.


End file.
